Beech

Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a large and stately tree capable of growing up to 140'. It is classified as a native in the South of England where it crept slowly northwards as the ice sheet retreated at the end of the last Ice Age.

It has always been closely allied with mankind: beeches have been coppiced and pollarded since the Iron Age for timber and fuel, and even today more beech is used in the UK than any other hardwood. In times past, beech nuts (or beechmast) were an important source of nutrition for humans and their livestock, especially pigs, who were driven through the beechwoods to graze on the fallen mast. The trees produce nuts only once every four or five years, for some reason. In fallow years the tree still produces the little triangular nuts in their spiny cases, but the nuts themselves are just sad empty shells. 

If you come across a carpet of nuts in a productive year it's well worth filling your pockets with the little gleaming nuggets of treasure, as they are delicious. Simply roast them briefly in a hot oven or on the stove top, peel off the fiddly casings, salt and enjoy.
 

 

The young spring leaves of the beech are a wonder in themselves: pale, translucent and covered with a down of silky hairs so soft that it's almost impossible to stop stroking them once you've started. If you can bring yourself to strip a good hat-full from the tree, do so. Then steep them in gin for a couple of months, strain and add sugar and you have made Beech-Leaf Noyau, a traditional liqueur that has been made for centuries and of course is reputed to have many benefits for the constitution...

There's something lovely about beech bark, which is smooth and grey and hugs the contours of the tree like a slinky dress. As bark goes, it's thin and delicate and, unusually for bark, prone to sunburn. If trees are felled in a shady forest, exposing tender beech trunks to the sun, the exposed trees can actually die from it.

The beech's tender bark has long been a canvas for the carved initials and arrow-struck hearts of lovers, a tradition which may have its roots in old love spells and superstitions. 

Beech has always had a long association with books and writing. Its fine, close-grained timber was used for writing tablets in Germanic societies before the development of paper. The Old English word 'bōc' and the Old Norse word 'bók' both mean 'beech' in the primary sense and 'book' in the secondary. In Swedish, 'bok' means both 'book' and 'beech'. In German, 'buch' is book and 'buche' is beech, so you can see that the association was widespread. 

The dense shade cast by the beechwood's canopy makes the woodland floor an unpromising habitat for other species of tree and because of this, over time, beeches can come to dominate mixed woodland. The ground beneath beech trees is covered with a thick carpet of fallen leaves and beechmast, and together with the smooth grey pillars of the trunks and the vaulted branches holding 

aloft the distant canopy, there is something of the cathedral about an old beechwood. There's a particular kind of silence to be found there too. It's an interesting silence, and I can listen to it for hours. 

Red Deer

The Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) is the largest non-domesticated mammal still existing in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, and is one of the largest deer species in the world. It is found in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and the Caucasus and has a life span of up to 18 years.

The red deer migrated into Britain from Europe about 11,000 years ago. The animal was a vital source of food, skins and tools (made from the bones and antlers) to Mesolithic man. The importance of the red deer to early humans is illustrated by the fact they are depicted in cave art throughout Europe, with some of the art dating from as early as the upper Paleolithic period, 40,000 years ago.

When man began to develop agriculture in Neolithic times,  the red deer population declined as their forest habitat was cleared to make way for fields. The deer survived only in isolated pockets throughout the UK, with the main populations in the Scottish Highlands and South-West England. The red deer stag's impressive size and magnificent antlers have always made him a prestigious prize for the hunter, so the Normans sought to conserve the dwindling populations in protected parks and forests for royal hunting, but this protection was lost during the Medieval period and numbers declined once more. By the end of the 18th century the red deer was extinct in the Scottish Lowlands and most of England and Wales.

In the 19th century profits from sheep farming declined and deer stalking became fashionable, leading landowners to dedicate large areas to 'deer forest' (without any trees) where deer could multiply and be easily hunted. This, along with Victorian re-introductions and escapes from deer parks have all contributed to their resurgence and red deer are now widely distributed throughout Britain once more. Populations elsewhere are generally declining. 

Only the stags grow antlers, which sprout in the spring, driven by a surge in testosterone production. As autumn approaches the antlers stop growing and harden in readiness for the battles of the rut, or mating season, which occurs from late September to November. Stags compete for access to females,
or hinds, by performing elaborate displays of dominance including roaring, ritualised behaviour such as parallel walking and, as a last resort against rivals who will not submit to the less violent displays of supremacy, fighting.

The antlers are shed in April or May and almost immediately begin to grow again. This uses a massive amount of energy and nutrients but it ensures that the strongest and healthiest stags have the best chance of breeding and do not become disadvantaged by damaged antlers from previous ruts.

Shed antler is a brilliant material for making hair toys, as it is lightweight, organic, immensely strong and flexible and full of character. It has been used by humans for tens of thousands of years to make tools, ornaments and toys, and its durability means some of these items are still around today.

I try to hollow out as much of the fibrous 'marrow' of the antler as I can, which results in a much smoother surface and lighter weight to the piece. I finish the antler with natural oils and recommend oiling the surface sporadically to maintain the finish. Antler is much more stable and water-resistant than wood; however, I would still caution against using soap and water to clean it. Instead, rub an oil of your choice (I use olive, but other vegetable and nut oils and even baby oil are fine) over the piece, leave it for a few minutes then wipe off thoroughly with a clean, dry cloth or absorbent tissue. I regularly use antler hair toys in damp hair and have never encountered any problem from this.

I made this slim three-prong fork from a section of antler that I hollowed out and sanded down to the pure pale bone. It is really light and delicate in comparison with some of the larger forks I've been making from antler tips:

This is a big, curved fork made from the top 'branch' of the antler. I've hollowed out a lot of the marrow in order to lighten it:

and it now weighs in at just over 50g, but I'm going to work on it some more this weekend and see if I can shave another few grams off before I list it in my soon-to-be-opened Etsy shop.

Box

Box (Buxus sempervirens) is a small evergreen tree or shrub native to the British Isles. In its natural state it appears an unremarkable sort of tree:

But it is likely to be familiar to all as the dense shrub commonly used to create topiary.

It is extremely slow-growing and yields a wood so dense and close-grained that when green it sinks in water. The colours of box wood vary from deep greys and reddish browns to a golden, buttery yellow. Its grain patterns display fantastic whorls and shadows, particularly in wood harvested from the cooler climate of the North of Scotland where it grows very slowly indeed. 

Box wood has long been favoured for carving and turning due to its strength, resilience and fine grain. It was the original material used for woodcuts and woodblock printing. In the past it was commonly used in the making of musical instruments, among them recorders, wooden flutes and the Great Highland Bagpipes, but the difficulty of finding sizeable pieces of this wood and the trend of 

using imported exotic hardwoods has made this relatively uncommon.

A boxwood flute

I gather most of my boxwood from an overgrown box hedge growing round a derelict cottage near an area known as the Cabrach in Aberdeenshire. The cottage was part of a tiny village on a hill that was abandoned after World War One, after most of its menfolk never returned. Amongst the crumbling houses are the remains of even earlier dwellings whose inhabitants were forced to leave during the Highland Clearances. There is a real sense of  sadness and history about the place.

The box hedge has slowly grown to immense size and whenever I gather the dead wood from its disorderly tangle I think of the people who planted it, all those years ago, around their cottage in the village on the hill.

This two-prong fork is made from the Aberdeenshire boxwood and it displays the lovely flame-like grain patterns characteristic of the wood I collect up there. Modelled by my Mum.

I made this curvy boxwood three-prong hair fork from wood I collected in the beautiful Vallée d'Aspe in the French Pyrenees. Modelled by Ro in the Pennine hills.

Yew

Yew (Taxus baccata) is a darkly beautiful evergreen tree native to the UK. The oldest trees in Europe are all yews, some of them several thousand years old. As the centuries creep by, the heart often rots out of the trees, leaving a ring of wonderfully contorted new growth around a hollow centre under a dense canopy.

Almost every one of these ancient trees has had a churchyard built around it sometime during the last millennium or so, illustrating the spiritual significance of these trees long before they came to be appropriated by the church. Many yews were also planted in churchyards, especially the upright-growing Irish yew, and these trees give the impression of standing sentinel over the  dead below.

Slow-growing, dark, gnarled and capable of reaching immense age, it's easy to see how these fearsome trees inspired veneration and became associated with death and rebirth. The sense of stillness and ages past is vivid in the shade and silence of an ancient yew.

Yew tunnel, Aberglasney, Wales

St. Edward's church, Gloucestershire

The heartwood of yew is a wonderful rich red-orange deepening to black in places, which contrasts beautifully with the pale golden sapwood. Yew wood is extremely strong and supple, properties that made it ideally suited for use in the great English longbows of medieval warfare.  Yew has long been a favourite of carvers and wood-turners for its  rich colours, its strength and its characterful grain patterns.

I made this curved three-prong fork from part of a large yew branch that I rescued from an abandoned campfire in Roslin Glen, near Edinburgh. You can see the pale sapwood intrusions contrasting with the fantastic grain patterns of the reddish heartwood. Modelled by Ro in the Pennine hills.

This one is mainly sapwood with a heartwood knot at the top, made from part of the same salvaged branch. It was huge and spiky and I had to carry it for miles. I'm glad I did, though, as I've made loads of lovely things out of it and there's still a lot of it left. Yew is a brilliant material for hair toys, being light, strong, flexible, good at holding a smooth finish and, of course, beautiful in colour and grain. Modelled by my Mum Angela in her lovely garden.

Hawthorn

Hawthorn (Cratageous monogyna) is a small, gnarled, thorny tree native to the UK. It's far and away my favourite tree. In May the hawthorn coats itself with a cloak of milk-white blossoms, sometimes tinged with pink, and the blossom is often so profuse that the branches are completely obscured. The musky, intoxicating scent of the flowers is at its most powerful after rain, and perfumes the lanes and hedgerows with the truest scent of late spring and early summer.

    

In Autumn, the black, thorny branches hold aloft constellations of scarlet berries, feasts for the birds.

 Hawthorns are incredibly hardy trees, found in almost every habitat in the British Isles. If you spy a hunched, wind-sculpted tree clinging to some wild hillside, chances are it'll be a hawthorn.

In the mythologies of many European cultures, hawthorn is sacred to the Fairies. It's easy to see why, as there's something palpably mysterious and otherworldly about this species. Even now in many parts of Ireland hawthorns (or whitethorns as they're known over there) can be seen standing in otherwise cleared fields, a testament to farmers' unwillingness to anger the Sídhe by cutting them down. It is said that one of the surest ways to be carried off by the Fairies is to fall asleep under a  hawthorn tree on a May evening.  It hasn't happened to me yet though.

Hawthorn wood is dense, strong and extremely hard. It is deep brown in colour, sometimes with a pinkish tinge. It burns at a very high temperature and an old rhyme from the days of wood-fired ovens states:

"By country folk 'tis often said

That Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread."

I made this two-prong hair fork yesterday from a hawthorn branch that I collected last year from Wynyard Woodland Park, near Stockton-on-Tees, after the hedge trimmers had left bits all over the 

place. The shape and features of the wood determines what I make from it; this piece was made from the junction of two small branches and displays a swirly knot on the top part. 

This is a hair stick I made from part of the same branch, modelled by Ro in the lovely Pennine hills.