British Plants and Flowers – Hornbeam

Name – The common English name of hornbeam derives from the hardness of the wood (likened to horn) and the Old English beam, a tree which in turn comes from the German ‘baum’.

Description - A sturdy tree, which somewhat resembles the beech and reaching ninety feet in height. The flowers are wind-pollinated pendulous catkins both male and female flowers are on separate catkins, but on the same tree (monoecious). The fruit is a small nut about 3-6 mm long, held in a leafy bract.

Origin – The tree produces an extremely hard, white and close-grained wood which has been used particularly for cogwheels and butchers chopping blocks because it is has such strength it is difficult to chip and does not become porous in water. The wood is said to be so hard that it blunts woodworking tools and the nuts are highly attractive to birds. To grow this tree, you need to find a low-lying rich soil or clay and the hornbeam is shade tolerant. In wider landscapes this is a tree that can be coppiced or pollarded and is also good for hedges – so good in fact that the mazes at Hampton Court were grown from Hornbeam before they were replaced by Holly and Yew. It’s equally a fact that right up to the late Victorian period, this tree when it grew within an hour’s train journey of London was pollarded and coppiced to provide charcoal, faggots (for lighting fires) and articles such as bean-sticks, all of which were transported by train or canal boat and the wood was used to make some of the earliest professional tennis rackets!

British plant hornbeam photograph by apium, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

bluebell, comfrey, flax, foxglove, hawthorn, heartsease, heather, herb robert, holly, hollyhock, honeysuckle, hop, hornbeam, jacobs ladder, larkspur, oak, periwinkle, rowan, silver birch, snowdrop, tansy, vipers bugloss, wild strawberry, willow, yarrow

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