Beeches got old, senile and then fell down

IN THE part of the country that I live in there were a number of dramatic incidents over the course of the winter when large trees came crashing down in storms, blocking roads and, in some cases, doing damage to buildings and vehicles.

In practically every case the trees that fell were large beeches and other species of tree of the same size survived.

The reason the beeches fell is that they had reached the end of their natural life-span. When the wind took them they were already dying slowly and losing the battle with invading fungi of species like ganoderma. Beeches do not have a very long life expectancy compared to other species of large tree. They tend to become “senile,” to use the technical forestry word, at around 250 years old.