[Trees]
(broadleaved and coniferous trees)

Trees have been used throughout history and throughout the world for foodstuffs (fruit and nuts), animal feed (nuts and foliage), timber, firewood, shelter, ornament and medicine.

The following traditional poem describes the characteristics of each species when burnt as firewood:

Beech-wood fires burn bright and clear

If the logs are kept a year;

Store your beech for Christmastide

With new-cut holly laid beside;

Chestnut’s only good, they say,

If for years ’tis stored away;

Birch and fir-wood burn too fast

Blaze too bright and do not last;

Flames from larch will shoot up high,

Dangerously the sparks will fly;

But ash-wood green and ash-wood brown

Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown.

Oaken logs, if dry and old,

Keep away the winter’s cold;

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke;

Elm-wood burns like churchyard mould,

E’en the very flames are cold;

It is by the Irish said;

Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread,

Apple-wood will scent the room,

Pear-wood smells like flowers in bloom;

But ash-wood wet and ash-wood dry

A King may warm his slippers by.

Anon.