In Italy it is found only in the mountains; in the Apennines it is one of the dominant trees at|at from 3000 to 5000 feet. In the Sila mountains of Calabria, Elwes found it covering the mountains above the limit of chestnut, at from 3000 to 5000 feet and upwards. It is usually coppiced for charcoal and firewood; but it attains a considerable size, the largest measured being about 90 feet by 10–12 in girth. Here it is often mixed with the Calabrian pine. In Sicily it finds its southern limit on Mount Etna, where it ascends to 7200 feet.
In Spain the beech occurs in the Pyrenees and in the northern provinces only, its most southerly known habitat being in lat 40° 10' east of Cuença. In Portugal it has not, so far as we know, been recorded to exist.
The finest natural beech forests seen by us in Europe are on the northern slopes of the Balkans, where it grows as pure forest from near the foot of the mountains up to about 4000 feet. The trees are very straight and clean, but are being rapidly felled in those places where they are most accessible. Boissier[1] says that the beech occurs in northern Greece on Mounts Pindus and Pelion. Elwes found it in Macedonia, on the north side of Mount Olympus.[2](A.H. and H.J.E.)
Cultivation
Seed is without doubt the best means of reproducing the tree, and I am inclined to think that the best and cleanest trunks are produced by seedlings which have never been transplanted, but opinions differ on this question. Seed is only produced in quantity at intervals of several years, and in some years a large proportion of the seeds, even in districts where the beech grows well, are mere empty husks.
The season of 1890 was probably the best for beech-mast in England which had occurred for many years, and I took particular pains, by enclosing certain spots where I found a number of germinating seeds in the following April, to protect them. But a severe frost, which occurred in the middle of May, destroyed all or nearly all the seedlings in the open, and those whose germination had been delayed by dense shade, or a thick covering of leaves, mostly withered away in the dry summer which ensued, before their rootlets had become established in the ground. Notwithstanding this, in most woods where rabbits, pheasants, and wood-pigeons are not so abundant as to devour all the seedlings and seeds, a good number of seedling beech of the year 1901 may still be found, and in the New Forest and elsewhere the ground in suitable spots is covered with seedlings.
Whether the seed should be sown when ripe or kept until the following spring is a question which must be decided by local conditions and experience, but where the danger of late spring frosts is great, I should prefer keeping it in an airy, dry loft spread thinly on a floor until April, or even the first week in May, as if February and March are mild, it will germinate in March and run great risk of being frozen in April or May. On March 11, 1901, I found a quantity of
