What is origin of beech tree name?

Answer 1

dick (um... no. But thanks, mystery person.)

The name Beech is in early English boc, bece, or beoce; in German Buche, and in Swedish bok, and signifies either a book or the tree, the two senses being supposed to be connected by the fact that the ancient Runic writings were engraved upon beechen boards. "The origin of the word," says Dr. Prior in his "Popular Names of British Plants," "is identical with that of the Sanskrit boko, letter, bokos, writings; and this correspondence of the Indian and our own language is interesting as evidence of two things, viz.: that the Brahmins had the art of writing before they detached themselves from the common stock of the Indo-European race in Upper Asia, and that we and other Germans have received alphabetic signs from the East by a northern route, and not by the Mediterranean." This last remark of the learned Doctor's refers, of course, to our old black-letter Gothic characters and not to our modern Roman alphabet. As to the name Fagus, it may be of Keltic origin, and in the time of Pliny the Britons, as well as the Gauls, may, as he describes, have mixed the ashes of Beech-wood with goats'-fat to make a red dye for their hair and moustaches; or this name may then have pertained to the Sweet Chestnut, to which tree Caesar may have referred when he wrote that in Britain there was every kind of timber as in Gaul, except "fagum" and the fir.

-courtesy of 2020site.org.

Answer 2

The seeds of the American beech reside in a hard, light-brown, spiny bur known as an involucre or pod. Each of these contain 2 to 4 seeds.

Answer 3

The word "beech" comes from the Old English word "bēce," which is derived from the Proto-Germanic word "boikō." It likely originated from the Latin word "fagus," which also refers to the beech tree.