Fagus sylvatica the small catkins which are a hallmark of the Fagales order (beeches, chestnuts, oaks, walnuts, hickories, birches, and hornbeams). The female flowers produce beechnuts, small triangular nuts long and wide at the base; there are two nuts in each cupule, maturing in the autumn 5–6 months after pollination. Flower and seed production is particularly abundant in years following a hot, sunny and dry summer, though rarely for two years in a row. The natural range extends from southern Sweden to northern Sicily, west to France, southern England, northern Portugal, central Spain, and east to northwest Turkey, where it intergrades with
The Old Tree in 1900 in the Pavilion de l'Alma and the "La Plume" salon - in "La Revue Blanche", Felicien Fagus wrote: The Old Tree The Old Tree is a plaster sculpture by the French artist Auguste Rodin, originally conceived as part of his "The Gates of Hell" project. He produced it in 1885, only a year after the formation of the Salon des Independents. It measures 39.3x38.4x27 cm and shows a nude young woman clinging to an old man holding his arms out like a tree, contrasting several opposites - male and female, youth and age, softness and roughness. The work