1 40 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



the other broad-leaved trees. The natural effect 

 of this endowment is that when other trees are 

 grown along with the beech, these must be from 

 time to time protected against the latter during 

 thinning operations, otherwise the beech would 

 gradually crowd them out in course of time and 

 grow gregariously, forming pure woods. 



The coppicing power of beech is somewhat 

 limited in comparison with that of most other 

 broad-leaved trees of our woodlands. It is, 

 indeed, only in comparatively few districts that 

 beech coppices prevail to any extent. It is really 

 only suitable for coppice or as underwood in 

 copse on limy soils, where the rotation is not 

 below from twenty to thirty years. After about 

 forty to fifty years of age the young trees, when 

 once the bark has become thick and hard, lose 

 their power of shooting from the stool. Hence 

 the best treatment of the beech is to grow it as 

 highwoods, and to reproduce it naturally from the 

 beech-nuts or mast produced in fair abundance 

 about once every three to five years. 



When grown along with the oak, it is well to 

 cut it out in favour of the latter at about seventy 

 to eighty years of age, and then reproduce it from 



