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Published 2014
The generic name for beeches comes from a Greek word meaning ‘to eat’, indicating the importance which the nuts have had as food. However, the names in Germanic languages, Buche, Buke, etc., are all related to ‘book’. Loewenfeld (1957) speculates that this may be because runic tablets and early ‘books’ were made of beech; she notes also that the same is true of the first letters cut by Gutenberg for printing purposes.