From this link to the book the beech gathered a symbolism of wisdom, learning and the keeping of knowledge: it is the tree of literature and of ancient lore, and in the tree-symbolism of later esoteric and Druidic revival it stands for old wisdom, tradition and the written record set against the memory. Its smooth grey bark, which holds a carved letter or lover's name for the life of the tree, reinforced the association with inscription and remembrance. A tall, shade-casting, long-lived tree, the beech carries a quiet and consistent meaning drawn from a single accident of language, that the tree of the smooth writing-tablet became the tree of the book, and so of knowledge itself.
Ecologists sometimes call the deep, near-permanent shade beneath a mature beech canopy the beech desert, since so little else can grow on the woodland floor beneath it, a genuine and measurable ecological effect rather than a figure of speech, and one that gives beech woods their distinctively open, cathedral-like character compared with the tangled understorey of an oak or mixed wood. That same enclosing, silent quality, a hall of smooth grey trunks admitting almost no other green life, may have reinforced the tree's reputation as a place apart, suited to old wisdom and quiet record-keeping rather than to the noisier life of a more crowded wood.