Weeping beech measure in length. Flowers appear in the spring and are inconspicuous. The beechnuts sit in a thin spiny husk and are less than 5 cm in diameter. The triangular beech nuts are popular in autumn with birds, mice and squirrels. The green leaves become copper-toned in the fall. In winter the skeleton of the silvery stem with its branches remains attractive. The purple pigment in the leaves acts like a sunscreen to protect its new leaves, which is particularly important for plants that grow at high altitudes where the sun is fierce. The tree is not native to North America
Beech as sweet as a mild cabbage, though much softer in texture. The young leaves can be steeped in gin for several weeks, the liquor strained off and sweetened to give a light green/yellow liqueur called beech leaf noyau. In antiquity, the barks of beech tree were used by Indo-European people for writing-related purposes, especially in religious context. Beech wood tablets were a common writing material in Germanic societies before the development of paper. The Old English "bōc" and Old Norse "bók" both have the primary sense of "beech" but also a secondary sense of "book", and it is from "bōc"