Граб обыкновенный: описание и применение (Grab obyknovennyy: opisaniye i primeneniye)

Species of tree

Carpinus betulus, the European or common hornbeam, is a species of tree in the birch family Betulaceae, native to Western Asia and central, eastern, and southern Europe, including southern England.

It is a deciduous small to medium size tree reaching heights of , rarely , and often has a fluted and crooked trunk. The bark is smooth and greenish grey, even in old trees. The buds, unlike those of the beech, are long at the most, and pressed close to the twig. The leaves are alternate, long, with prominent veins giving a distinctive corrugated texture, and a serrated margin. It is monoecious, and the wind pollinated male and female catkins appear in early summer after the leaves. The fruit is a small long nut, partially surrounded by a three pointed leafy involucre long; it matures in autumn.

Hornbeam is considered native from Western Asia and throughout Europe. The species prefers a warm climate, and only naturally occurs below in elevation. It is a common tree in scree forests. There are a number of notable forests where C. betulus is a dominant tree species, among which include Epping Forest in the United Kingdom, and Halltorps hage in Öland, Sweden.

Three fossil fruits of Carpinus betulus have been extracted from borehole samples of the Middle Miocene fresh water deposits in Nowy Sacz Basin, West Carpathians, Poland.

In England, trees appear to prefer soils with a pH from 3.6 to 4.6 but tolerate up to 7.6. They are found on soils with moderate clay content and avoid soils with particularly high or low clay content.

Carpinus betulus is widely cultivated as an ornamental tree, for planting in gardens and parks throughout north west Europe. Because it stands up well to cutting back and has dense foliage, it has been much used in landscape gardening, mainly as tall hedges and for topiary. It was the classic tree used in French formal gardens for hedges in bosquets, as in the Gardens of Versailles, and in their English equivalent, the garden wilderness. There are several cultivars, notably 'Fastigiata' or 'Pyramidalis', a fastigiate tree when young, which has become a popular urban street tree in the United Kingdom and other countries. 'Frans Fontaine' is a similar fastigiate cultivar. Both the species C. betulus and the cultivar 'Fastigiata' have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. As early as Roman times, but also during the Thirty Years' War, defensive hedges (Landwehr) in Central Europe were largely planted from hornbeams. The bushes were chopped down with axes and broken down. The trees would then grow together with blackberries, dog roses, and other thorny bushes into impenetrable hedges. In the 11th century, for example, the Electorate of Mainz set up a large defensive forest called the de. Many place names with the endings hagen and hain refer to such landwehrs. Hildegard of Bingen wrote of hornbeam being used as a plant in traditional medicine to treat vitiligo. The heated hornbeam chips were pressed onto the affected skin areas. Hornbeam is used in Bach flower remedies as a treatment for exhaustion. This was the reason for lopping and hence indirectly the saving of Epping Forest, where the hornbeam was a favoured pollarding tree. The wood has a very high calorific value of around 2,300 kWh/RM.

The Last Tree The only tree that survived the devastation of the Battle of Delville Wood in 1916. It is preserved as part of the Delville Wood South African National Memorial near Longueval. Lincoln's Hornbeam Planted by President Lincoln at the United States Botanic Garden in the Capitol grounds, Washington D. C.