Beech - Fagus Sylvatica

Derelict beech pollard, Black Mountains

On a recent trip to the Black Mountains I passed by a number of impressively large derelict beech pollards that reminded me to look up the latest research into unravelling the history of beech in the British Isles. There was once a time when beech was believed to be native only to southern England. This paradigm has had to be revised in light of beech charcoal excavated by archaeologists in secure contexts and beech pollen found in waterlogged sediments viz drowned forest beds in the Severn estuary radiocarbon dated to around 6,000 years ago. The late Oliver Rackham produced a distribution map for beech in the New Naturalist Woodlands  and it has been reproduced in a comprehensive monograph on beech Packham, John R., et al. "Biological flora of the British Isles: Fagus sylvatica." Journal of Ecology 100.6 (2012): 1557-1608 

Presumed distribution of beech (fagus sylvatica) from Packham, John R., et al. "Biological flora of the British Isles: Fagus sylvatica." Journal of Ecology 100.6 (2012): 1557-1608.

A google search threw up the news that research had established that beech in Scotland was native in origin.



Moving onto Google scholar and finding anything related to recent research publications - with open access - on beech colonisation in Britain has proved challenging, vague generalisations seem to apply. All the current research seems to be centered on mainland Europe. Beech is apparently a thermophile and is used to reconstruct and model quaternary environments and with a widespread European distribution underpins some avenues of research. There are a plethora of papers attempting to model the distribution and colonisation rates of beech across Europe during the pleistocene/holocene and seems to entail postulating numerous glacial refugia. The glacial refugia influence the rate of colonisation, with increased rates to account for the bypass routes around significant mountain ranges, where colonisation rates are improbably high then alternative hypotheses need to proposed such as: beech mast transported by northward flowing rivers, animal dispersal, anthropogenic assisted distribution etc. One notable paper provides compelling evidence from radiocarbon dated pine, oak and beech charcoal, possibly indicating a glacial refugia in the Harz mountains and poses some interesting questions of colonisation and climate models Robin, Vincent, et al. "Too early and too northerly: evidence of temperate trees in northern Central Europe during the Younger Dryas." New Phytologist 212.1 (2016): 259-268. The paper provoked a comment and a reply. An interesting exercise and an insight into an ongoing area of much debate.