Before discussing hornbeam for bushcraft it’s worth spending a few minutes thinking about the tree itself.
Hornbeam – Carpinus betulus
Hornbeam is a member of the Betulaceae family, along with birch and alder.
They’re slow growing trees that are generally found in the south east of England, although they’ve been planted elsewhere in the British Isles. They’ll grow on clay and chalk and are often found in oak woodlands. They can grow up to 30m tall and live up to 300 years.
The bark is silvery-grey and often has vertical markings. I think of the bark as looking like snakeskin, other people have described it to me as like a body builder.
The buds are similar to that of beech (I think of them as being like a hand rolled cigar), but hornbeam buds aren’t as long. That’s only useful information if you know how long a beech bud is though (about 15 to 30mm)! Beech buds also protrude from the main stem at a 45° angle. On hornbeam the bud often lays almost flat along the stem.
Hornbeam. Photo courtesy of Neil Harris
The leaves are also similar to beech in that they’re simple and oval and about the same size. A simple leaf is a leaf with a single, undivided blade attached to a stem by a petiole. For completeness, a compound leaf is divided into distinct leaflets, think ash or elder. Take a look at this post on simple and compound leaves.
Oval refers to the shape, they’re widest in the middle and taper symmetrically towards the ends.
Beech leaves tend to be a darker shade of green and glossy whilst hornbeam is paler and more matte. Hornbeam leaves have a double serrate margin (the teeth are also serrated) whilst beech leaves have an entire margin which is pubescent. The photo below shows hornbeam leaves as they first emerge from buds.
Hornbeam twigs can sometimes be hairy.
Reproduction
Hornbeam is monoecious. That means that it has both male and female reproductive parts on the same tree. There are at least 2 ways to be monoecious, perfect and imperfect. Perfect means hermaphroditic, so each flower has both male and female reproductive parts. Imperfect means distinct male and female flowers. Hornbeam is imperfect
The catkins appear in early spring, March and April, about the same time as the leaves start to open.
Male flowers, or catkins are about 4 – 5 cm long and yellowish green.
Female catkins are shorter and harder to spot. Once pollinated they develop into winged fruits which appear in Septemberish time.
They have 3 bracts per nutlet. A bract is a modified leaf that is associated to a flower or cone. A nutlet is a one seeded fruit that developed from one flower having a single ovary where the ovary wall becomes hard.
Traditional uses for hornbeam
In the past it was referred to as ‘ironwood’, not just because it’s such a dense wood but because the charcoal produced from hornbeam was used to smelt iron.
It’s also been used to make yokes for oxen etc. (in fact some etymologists think that its genus name of Carpinus is derived from the Celtic for yoke) and for cogs in machinery in flour mills where there was an explosion risk.
Related to the use of hornbeam for charcoal, there are examples of coppiced hornbeam in the British Isles that are 1,500 years old. And this makes sense etc
Hornbeam for bushcraft
As hornbeam is such a dense wood it’s ideal for beetles or mallets for greenwood working.
For the same reason it makes really good bearing blocks for bow drilling.
The outer bark can be used as a tinder. My experience with it has been to collect the bark from a dead branch that’s still attached to the tree. It will ignite with a fire steel but I found that I needed to scrape a little pile of ferrocerium onto the bark to get it to go up. Take a look at this post to find out more.
The bark can be used to make a yellow dye.
We discuss hornbeam for bushcraft on many of our bushcraft courses, including our 2 Day Bushcraft Course and 5 Day Bushcraft Course as well as on the IOL Bushcraft Competency Certificate.
You can see photos from those courses, as well as all of our other courses, on our Facebook page.
