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Dear Luisma,
A claim frequently made by "Noddy" guides is that Basque has no native generic words for "animal", "king" and "tree".
This is wrong on all three counts. abere/abel- "livestock animal" is fairly close to a generic word for "animal" and is unquestionably a native word found in ancient sources (place and deity names) and has cognates in North Caucasian. bakaldun/bakardun "king" (literally "having autonomy"?) is also a very ancient native word and appears in at least one inscription in the North Iberian alphabet and also in a number of deity names.
And the Basque word for "tree", zu(h)aitz, is generic, native and extremely ancient.
Note first of all that the word appears in numerous place-names, such as Zuazo, Zugasti, Zugazaga and Zuhatzu, all meaning "grove of trees" (the Latin equivalent is Arboretum). And Suesa, Cantabria, may be an instance lying just outside the present-day Basque Country.
These are modern examples, of course, and some may be traceable back to the 10th century and earlier. But are there any really ancient instances, dating back to Roman times and beyond?
Yes, indeed there are.
There is Suissatium, a town existing in Roman times somewhere around the modern Vitoria-Gasteiz and belonging to the Caristi/Karistoi. This was called Suestasion by Ptolemy and Seustatium by George of Ravenna. It may well be Zuhatzu, just west of Gasteiz.
If we go further afield, we discover that in Roman times there was a tribe, the Suessetani, mentioned only by Livy and living in the Zaragoza region. Remove the Roman -etani ending and we have *sues, which may well have been the Iberian generic word for "tree", the forerunner of the modern zu(h)aitz.
The name Suessetani is clearly similar in meaning to that of the neighbouring Vasco-nes (*was-ko "of the forest"), and to the north of the Pyrenees, the On-esi (*oain "forest").
Now look at the Iberian personal name, Suisetarten, part of the name of an Iberian mercenary from Ilerda recorded on the Ascoli Bronze Plate. This seems to be composed of *sues plus *tarten (presumably equivalent to Basque tartean "between") and may mean "among the trees". (The -e- could be a "link" letter or there may have been a plural r following the -e- lost through assimilation.)
So, not only is the Basque generic word for "tree" native and extremely ancient, it is also found in parts of the Iberian Peninsula outside the Basque Country as far afield as Cantabria and Catalonia.
What about the rest of Europe?
Well, yes, I can find ancient examples in France, Germany and Italy.
In France, there is the tribal name, Suessiones/Suessones, a people who lived in the Oise basin of Northern France at the time of Julius Caesar and whose name survives in the modern Soissons.
These people were Celts, of course (more accurately, they spoke a Celtic language). Presumably, their name predates the Celtic invasions of the Iron Age. It suggests that they were a forest people living on heavy clay soils which may not have been cleared for agriculture until the first millenium BC.
Suesia Palus is an unidentified lake in Germany mentioned only by Pomponius Mela, who also named two other lakes in that region - Estia and Melsagium. All three appear to be Dene-Caucasian. Suesia presumably refers to a woodland lake. Estia may mean "sweet" (Basque ezti "honey") and Melsagium seems to be connected with Basque baltsa "mud, partially melted snow" and balxa "marshy place". It could in fact be Pelso, the Roman name for what is now Lake Balaton in Hungary.
In Italy, there are several examples, all of them place-names:-
Suasa, a town of Umbria mentioned by Ptolemy and Pliny.
Suessa Aurunca, a city of Latium, located on the south-west slopes of Rocca Monfina.
Suessa Pometia, an ancient city of Latium which had disappeared by historical times.
Suessula, a city of Campania and the modern Sessola.
In the circumstances, I think we should dismiss the oft-made claim that there is no generic native Basque word for "tree".
With best wishes,