Medieval

Elms

Carpentry: Elm wood was valued for its interlocking grain, and consequent resistance to splitting, with significant uses in wagon wheel hubs, chair seats and coffins. The often long, straight, trunks were favoured as a source of timber for keels in ship construction.

The density of the wood varies due to differences between species, but averages around 560 kg per cubic metre.

Elm is used primarily for its wood, which has great strength, durability, a tight-twisted grain and is resistant to rotting (when permanently wet). Uses include: boat building (keels, rudders and trawler boards) furniture, wheel hubs, wooden water pipes, floorboards, coffins and in decorative turning. In fact before metal was widely available many medieval English towns, including Bristol, Reading, Exeter, Southampton, Hull and Liverpool used hollowed trunks as water pipes. Some of these old water mains still survive and are occasionally dug up during building works. The foliage was also used for feeding and bedding domestic livestock. Elm was also used as piers in the construction of the original London Bridge. However this resistance to decay in water does not extend to ground contact.

Elms also have a long history of cultivation for fodder, with the leafy branches cut for livestock.

Elm bark, cut into strips and boiled, sustained much of the rural population of Norway during the great famine of 1812. The seeds are particularly nutritious, comprising 45% crude protein, and less than 7% fibre by dry mass.

. Bark . Coppice . Dye . Fine-grain . Firewood . Flavoring . Fodder . Fruit . Hardwood . Hedgerows . Indoor use only . Marshy or moist soil . Medicinal . Moisture resistance . Paper . Piles . Seeds and Nuts . Softwood . Special Uses .

. Wood and Trees - external links .

Alders . Alder buckthorn . Ash . Beech . Birches . Box . Cherries, Plums, Blackthorn . Dogwood . Elder . Elms . Hazels . Hollies . Hornbeams . Junipers . Limes . Maples . Oaks . Pines . Poplars . Purging buckthorn . Rowans and Whitebeams . Service tree . Native shrubs . Willows . Yews .

Hazels

Hazels
Common Hazel (Corylus avellana)

Hazel wood was crucially important in the past. The wood is very flexible and can be twisted and even knotted. Uses include thatching spars, net stakes, water divining sticks, hurdles, furniture, firewood. The hazel nuts were also a prized food source, so much so that cultivated forms of hazel were bred for their nuts or 'cobs'. Now, however, grey squirrels strip the trees before the nuts can be harvested.

Hazelnuts

Common Hazel is cultivated for its nuts in commercial orchards in Europe, Turkey, Iran and Caucasus. The name "hazelnut" applies to the nuts of any of the species of the genus Corylus. This hazelnut, the kernel of the seed, is edible and used raw or roasted, or ground into a paste. The seed has a thin, dark brown skin which has a bitter flavour and is sometimes removed before cooking.

Hazelnut has a significant place among the types of dried nut in terms of nutrition and health because of the special composition of fats (primarily oleic acid), protein, carbohydrates, vitamins (vitamin E), minerals, dietary fibres, phytosterol (beta-cytosterol) and antioxidant phenolics such as flavan-3-ols. The nutritional and sensory properties of hazelnut make it a unique and ideal material for food products. Hazelnuts are a good source of energy with their 60.5% fat content.

Wood and Trees - external links .

Hollies

Hollies
European Holly (Ilex aquifolium)

In many western cultures, holly is a traditional Christmas decoration, used especially in wreaths. The wood is heavy, hard and whitish; one traditional use is for chess pieces, with holly for the white pieces, and ebony for the black. Other uses include turnery, inlay work and as firewood. Looms in the 1800s used holly for the spinning rod. Because holly is dense and can be sanded very smooth, the rod was less likely than other woods to snag threads being used to make cloth.

Between the thirteenth and eighteenth century, before the introduction of turnips, holly was cultivated for use as winter fodder for cattle and sheep. Less spiny varieties of holly were preferred, and in practice the leaves growing near the top of the tree have far fewer spines making them more suitable for fodder.

Wood and Trees - external links .

Hornbeams

European Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus; southern Great Britain only)

The common English name of "hornbeam" derives from the hardness of the wood (likened to horn) and the Old English beam, a tree (cognate with German "baum").

Hornbeams yield a very hard timber, giving rise to the name ironwood. Dried heartwood billets are nearly white and are suitable for decorative use. For general carpentry, hornbeam is rarely used, partly due to the difficulty of working it. Its hardness has however lent it to use for carving boards, tool handles, handplane soles, coach wheels, piano actions and other situations where a very tough, hard wood is required, perhaps most interestingly as gear pegs in simple machines, including traditional windmills. It is sometimes coppiced to provide hardwood poles. It is also used in parquet flooring.

Wood and Trees - external links .

Junipers

Junipers
Common Juniper (Juniperus communis)

Juniper berries are a spice used in a wide variety of culinary dishes and best known for the primary flavoring in gin (and responsible for gin's name, which is a shortening of the Dutch word for juniper, genever). Juniper berries are also used as the primary flavor in the liquor Jenever and sahti-style of beers. Juniper berry sauce is often a popular flavoring choice for quail, pheasant, veal, rabbit, venison and other meat dishes.

(Its astringent blue-black seed cones, commonly known as "Juniper berries", are too bitter to eat raw and are usually sold dried and used to flavour meats, sauces, and stuffings. They are generally crushed before use to release their flavour. The cones are used to flavour gin. In fact, the word 'gin' is derived from the French word for juniper berry, genièvre, which is the name for gin in France. The Slovak national alcoholic beverage Borovička is also flavoured with juniper berry extract.

Since juniper berries have a strong taste, they should be used sparingly. They are generally used to enhance meat with a strong flavour, such as game, including game birds, or tongue.)

Juniper berries are steam distilled to produce an essential oil that may vary from colorless to yellow or pale green. Some of its chemical components are alpha pinene, cadinene, camphene and terpineol.

Wood and Trees - external links .

Linden

Lindens (Limes)
Small-leaved Linden/Lime (Tilia cordata; southern Great Britain only)
Large-leaved Linden/Lime (Tilia platyphyllos; southern Great Britain only)

Although Tilia cordata is listed as the preferred medicinal species, T. platyphyllos is also used medicinally and somewhat interchangeably. The dried flowers are mildly sweet and sticky, and the fruit is somewhat sweet and mucilaginous. Linden tea has a pleasing taste, due to the aromatic volatile oil found in the flowers. The flowers, leaves, wood, and charcoal (obtained from the wood) are used for medicinal purposes. Active ingredients in the linden flowers include flavonoids (which act as antioxidants), volatile oils, and mucilaginous constituents (which soothe and reduce inflammation). The plant also contains tannins that can act as an astringent.

Linden flowers are used in colds, cough, fever, infections, inflammation, high blood pressure, headache (particularly migraine), as a diuretic (increases urine production), antispasmodic (reduces smooth muscle spasm along the digestive tract), and sedative. The flowers were added to baths to quell hysteria, and steeped as a tea to relieve anxiety-related indigestion, irregular heartbeat, and vomiting. The leaves are used to promote sweating to reduce fevers. The wood is used for liver and gallbladder disorders and cellulitis (inflammation of the skin and surrounding soft tissue). That wood burned to charcoal is ingested to treat intestinal disorders and used topically to treat edema or infection, such as cellulitis or ulcers of the lower leg.

Wood and Trees - external links .

Maples

Maples
Field Maple (Acer campestre; southern Great Britain only)

Field Maple is widely grown as an ornamental tree in parks and large gardens. The wood is white, hard and strong, and used for furniture, flooring, wood turning and musical instruments, though the small size of the tree and its relatively slow growth make it an unimportant wood.

Wood and Trees - external links .

Pages

Elms

Hazels

Hollies

Hornbeams

Junipers

Linden

Maples