IN THE CANON OF biodiversity, the beech tree is – if I can mix metaphorical orders of creation – a black sheep. It is self-centred, moody, tyrannical, the very opposite of a team player. Foresters shun it because it caves in to drought and wind. Conservationists hate it for its uncompromising shade, which smothers other life forms. Beech woods don’t score high on biodiversity tick-lists, or on the richness of their human life. Buchenwald, one such wood in Germany, has become a terrible byword for what can emerge from a culture of the dark and the singular.
I grew up in English beech country, ...
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