COST Action E 52 - vTI - Bund.de

Photo 2: Stand of beech in Kilbora Property, Camolin Forest, Co Wexford (J. Fennessy).
of seed. Unfortunately no details regarding the origin of the clones remain and these orchards have
never been used for seed collection.
In the period 1954 to 1960 most seed continued to come from home collected sources, but imports
from Germany and Italy were also planted. During the period 1960 to 1980 the majority of seed was
imported from Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Denmark with very little home
collected seed used. From 1980 to the present Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian and Czech material
continued to be planted until 1996 when Irish Forest Service recommendations were established.
These recommendations are to plant only Irish, British, Dutch, Belgian, northern French, Danish
and northern German sources in an attempt to use reproductive material from sources with similar
climatic conditions.
An analysis of commercial stands established between 1930 and 1980 with these imported seed
sources showed that both German and UK material were superior to other imported sources in
terms of survival, growth rate and stem form (J. Neilan, unpublished). In fact stands of Romanian,
Bulgarian and Czechoslovakian sources could not be found, suggesting that this material had proven
to be unsuitable for use in Ireland. One UK “research” seed source has consistently produced good
quality plantations that are currently used as seed stands, however the exact origin of this material is
unclear. Indeed several other home collected sources in old estates were also found to produce good
stands although their original seed source is unknown.
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