Mast

 

It's looking a good year for Mast, the forests' Beech (Fagus sylvatica) are putting on a good show; of course, time will tell. Though fiddly and time consuming to process, 'beechnuts' are potentially a valuable wild food resource. Found in prehistoric contexts beechnuts have a long history of use; traditionally they're dry pan toasted, crushed and roasted for a coffee substitute, pressed for oil, and more. Come autumn the pigs at pannage love them too. 

Mast

 

Where tall mature beeches grow the woodland floor is covered in mast; it's been a bumper year, and although the beechnuts are small and fiddly to process, they're a reasonably good size. The small nut/seed is edible and have been traditionally used by human communities either by the people themselves or to feed animals; beware though too many can cause stomach upsets. They can also be used to produce oil still frequently used in parts of Europe; I crushed a couple between my fingers, they were good and oily and left my thumb and forefinger feeling glassy smooth. A tasty treat for the pigs at pannage if they sweep this way.

Mast

 

It's an outstanding year for Beech (Fagus sylvatica) mast (mast being the fruit or nut of the tree), throughout the forest the boughs are loaded with their rough hairy cups, each containing one or two nuts. Of course, we'll have to wait until September to see if they amount to much; quality and quantity of mast production is massively variable, they say you get a good mast season every few years, which is believed to be driven, in part, by weather/climatic factors. At home for the first time our small (20 year old) container (old chimney pot) grown Beech tree has some hairy cases on it.

Bountiful Beech mast

The boughs on some of the forests beeches are weighed down with mast this year, good size too by the looks of them. Although the small triangular Beechnuts are described as bitter, I've always found them to have a good mildly nutty taste. For me the real prohibitive issue around them as a wild food is the processing required, which is fiddly and laborious. Anyway, if we don't eat them some of the forests birds and smaller mammals rely on them.  Still worth remembering as wild resource.