Can anyone provide information on natural habitat, region of origin?
Type :
European beech trees natural habitat, region of origin
in the search bar on your search engine and the answer will magically appear.
The forum is for discussions about iNaturalist, not a place for researching your questions for you.
POWO has a range map, but it only shows national borders: https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:305836-2
For GB it’s probably only native in South East England to South East Wales, particularly on chalk soils, but it can occasionally grow on acidic soils if they’re well drained enough.
This PDF may be of interest - https://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/media/atlas/Fagus_sylvatica.pdf
Where is the discussion?
EUROPEAN beech - you’d expect Europe, but no, they’re also introduced to the US >:|
The trouble with looking for natural habitat and range of trees that play a major role in forestry is they haven’t been restricted to their natural range for many centuries. So one can look at where they occurred naturally before forestry began, but in Britain they were still responding to the last glaciation so their range at that time was not static. If man had not interfered, they would have continued to spread so their natural range now would be different from what can be deduced from palynology and preserved fragments from centuries ago. And for a warmth-loving species like beech, climate change would now be adding an effect to where they could naturally colonise.
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Even before, trees with edible fruit, like beech and most oaks, were dispersed (intentionally or unintentioanlly) by humans since the end of the last ice age.
So for many European tree species it is absolutelly impossible to say how far they would disperse from refugia without humans; and mostly, their current continuous range, is considered as natural if there are no evidence to the contrary (like there is for chestnut)
This is an interesting read on that topic:
H. J. B. Birks. 1989. Holocene Isochrone Maps and Patterns of Tree-Spreading in the British Isles.
Journal of Biogeography, Vol. 16, No. 6: 503-540. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/i331173)
I guess Jan suspected it was a student trying to get someone to do their homework for free, but now the student has TOO much information, and they can do a PhD on the subject if they want! This is the trouble with asking experts. You don’t get simple answers!
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Natural habitat are humid suboceanic parts of Europe, Its optimum is in the montane belts of central and Southern Europe.
It tolerates drought, dry air, heat and extreme frost poorly; but where these factors are absent, it is an extremely competitive and dominant tree, often forming monodominant stands, where only a few individual trees of other species grow, or co.dominant with European white fir (Abies alba), with which it is in a strage dynamic balance, where it seems the two often exchange in dominance over long periods of time. beech forests have a reputation of being species poor, which is only true for beech forestsnorth of the Alps, but beech forests on the Southeastern Alpine fringes and north western Dinarides (where the beech also had the biggest and most important glacial refugia) are among the most species rich forests in Europe.
In Southern Europe it often forms the tree line in the mountains.
For distribution, you literally have a good map on its wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagus_sylvatica
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You’re right, that was my suspicion.
Perhaps we’ll hear back from OP
There’s seldom a simple answer in nature… then add the experts…
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Two weeks and no op…