T182 Atlantic acidophilous Fagus forests
Description
Mesophile deciduous forests potentially and often actually occupying large areas on acid substrates wherever summers (by any combination of elevation and northern aspect) are cool, cloudy or rainy enough to support the high transpiration demands caused by beech’s aggressive light-competing behavior.
Protection
Protected by the EU Habitat Directive under the code 9120 ["Atlantic acidophilous beech forests with Ilex and sometimes also Taxus in the shrublayer (Quercion robori-petraeae or Ilici-Fagenion)"].Floristic Composition
Frequent species
Indicator species
Phytosociology
- Avenello ibericae-Fagetum sylvaticae
- Blechno spicant-Fagetum sylvaticae
- Omphalodo nitidae-Fagetum sylvaticae
- Saxifrago hirsutae-Fagetum sylvaticae
- Saxifrago spathularis-Fagetum sylvaticae
Relations with other habitat types
Acidophilous analogue of T172 whose understorey lacks the most ostensibly calcicolous species (especially those associated, like Carex caudata, with abrupt calcareous beechwoods) and is dominated by calcifuges like Blechnum spicant and Luzula sylvatica.
Regional distribution
For their climatic requirements, beechwoods prefer north-facing slopes (less productive as croplands or pastures and harder to burn, thus having been reserved for timber and less deforested by traditional agrarian communities, leading to the relative abundance of these forests) and are rare in lowlands, increasingly so towards the south and the west of the ecoregion, where they ultimately disappear altogether, as happens in Portugal. It has been argued that the expansion of beechwoods at the expense of T1By on acid substrates was caused or accelerated by differential human pressure on the more valuable timber of oak trees.
Known occurrences and potential area of occupancy of the habitat type in the study region.
