Medio-European wood barley beech forests

Description (English)

Slightly moist Fagus sylvatica forests developed over calcareous bedrock on stony, neutral or weakly acid rendzina or similar humus-carbonate soils, with Galium odoratum, Melica uniflora, Mercurialis perennis, Lathyrus vernus, Asarum europaeum, Hordelymus europaeus, Epipactis helleborine, Epipactis leptochila, Neottia nidus-avis, Circaea lutetiana, Viola reichenbachiana, distributed locally on the hills, low mountains and plateaux of the Hercynian arc and its peripheral regions, from the Ardenne-Eifel to Moravia, and north to Denmark and southern Sweden, in the entire Jura catena, in Lorraine and the eastern Paris basin, in Burgundy, in the Bavarian Alpine piedmont, the Vorarlberg limestone Alps, the Wienerwald. They include the Central European Fagus-Mercurialis perennis forests, as well as occasional stands exceptionally rich in spring-flowering geophytes, sometimes known as wild garlic-rich beech woods.

Source: EUNIS habitat classification