Why is the beech a familiar and precious tree in our forests?

A tree is a world in itself. The proof: you just need to count the number of insects that live with it or at its expense to see it. This is the work that naturalists* do, who patiently examine life under the large foliage of this noble forest creature very widespread in France that is the beech, for example. At home, the phytoptus mite bites its young leaves and overwinters in its buds. The hemiptera aphid overwinters on the twigs. As for butterflies, moth caterpillars dig galleries in the leaves and attack beechnuts – beech fruits – to grow there. The weevil, a pretty black beetle, winters under its bark and lays its eggs in the veins of the leaves.

As for flies, midges like to form reddish galls on the leaves, to allow their larvae to develop. All these little people then attract birds and rodents and encourage the life of mushrooms and lichens of all kinds. A real joy to live like this next to your tree. This is also true for humans. Especially since a beech tree can live a very long time if we give it time: at least two centuries, sometimes much more. Why then not eat, in moderation, its young leaves in salads, raw or cooked? From its boiled, grilled or pressed beechnuts to obtain an oil, which, consumed in small quantities, would have deworming or even neurostimulating properties? And even its inner bark which, boiled, can provide flour suitable for making bread? The trunk, silvery gray and smooth, is exposed in its fragility: nothing worse than engraving our moods there with a pocket knife. The tree loses its momentum. Its reason for being.

* Plants and their insects, by Bruno Didier and Hervé Guyot, Ed. Quae, 260 p. ; €36.