The oldest beech trees in Europe have been discovered: they are in Calabria and are over 620 years old

In Calabria, in the Pollino National Park, the two oldest beech trees in Europe, which are more than 600 years old, have been discovered.

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

The two beeches are over 620 years old discovered in Pollino National Park, in Calabria, thanks to a scientific research that has allowed them to be dated with the dendrochronological method, or through the measurement of the growth rings.

A very important discovery why the two beech trees in the park are the oldest in all of Europe and today they take the name of Michele and Norman, inspired respectively by the botanist Michele Tenore, and the British traveler and writer Norman Douglas, both passionate about the Pollino forests, whose natural wonders they described.

Thanks to them, to the naturalness and its ecological characteristics, the Pollinello beech wood has become part of the Unesco World Heritage Site. Among other things, here it is possible to come across many trees that are born and die according to a natural cycle, which is quite rare in today's forests, where human intervention is the norm.

But who is responsible for all this? From the team of scholars who published the research “Lessons from the wild: slow but increasing long ‐ term growth allows for maximum longevity in European beech” in Ecology. Among them are Gianluca Piovesan, Franco Biondi, Michele Baliva, Giuseppe De Vivo, Vittoria Marchianò, Aldo Schettino and Alfredo Di Filippo.

The researchers revealed that the longevity of the two beech trees would depend on a slow growth which however increases over the centuries. Therefore, if in the first years the growth is very limited, also due to an extreme climate, the trees, in general, tend to remain smaller on average but to last longer.

So much so that Michele and Norman are quite short, their height does not exceed 15 meters, and this feature too would have contributed to making them more resistant. As has been found in other ancient beech woods of the Casentino and Abruzzo National Parks, formerly a Unesco World Heritage Site.

The research, made possible thanks to the collaboration between Universities and National Parks such as that of Pollino, was not disclosed by chance, the goal among others is raise awareness among institutions to conserve forest ecosystems from a sustainable perspective.