Beech (BE)
Fagus sylvatica
We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Preparing to search
Fagus sylvatica
Native to southern Britain, but widely naturalised throughout the British Isles. Widely distributed across Europe.
Material from good quality British stands should be preferred with registered western European seed stands as an alternative.
A shade tolerant species which withstands wind exposure and is cold hardy but is susceptible to frost damage when young. It can be found on mineral soils of poor to medium nutrient status including calcareous soils but does not tolerate compacted, waterlogged or very dry soils. Can grow in mixture with a wide range of broadleaved species. It is a comparatively shallow rooted species and mature trees can suffer dieback or death in drought years. For such reasons, it is probably better suited to areas with more than 700 mm rainfall well distributed across the year.
Records suggest beech is susceptible to Phytophthora root rot, with various species (P. cinnamomi, P. cambivora and P. pseudosyrinage) all causing root death and bleeding stem lesions leading to debilitation and decline. It has proved susceptible to infection by Phytophthora ramorum, although only when grown in close proximity to other infected plants which are a major source of spores. Beech is also prone to attack by various root and butt rots such as Meripilus, Ganoderma and Armillaria. Drought stress can also induce bark death as a result of strip canker fungi.
Plantation grown trees can suffer from beech bark disease, resulting from the combination of a sap-sucking scale insect (Cryptococcus fagisuga) and canker fungus (Nectria coccinea). Severe infestations can kill affected trees. It is also very vulnerable to bark stripping by grey squirrels.
Its relatively vulnerability to drought means that its use in parts of southern and eastern Britain should be limited to soils of good moisture status. Conversely, the warming climate may see greater productivity on suitable sites in northern Britain.
Beech is categorised as a Principal tree species. These are species which are currently widely used for forestry and will continue to be a dominant unless affected by a new pest or disease or adversely affected by climate change.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.