The forest of Sare, in the French Pyrenees Atlantiques, and close to the Col De Lizarietta, is one of the oldest forests of France. The forest holds a remarkable amount of huge beeches, oaks and Taxus baccate. Their exact age remains unknown, but several of these forest giants are more then five hundred years old!

Here are some images of the impressive forest giants, old oaks.

Some of the narrow valleys with very steep slopes seem to have been kept almost free of any human intervenience during the past hundreds of years. There the forest looks like an intact pristine forest, which is unique in Western Europe.

On the more gentle slopes, the forest is scattered with huge oaks and has a more old park-like appearance. This part of the forest was probably grazed for long periods during the past, and many of the trees must have been pollared for long periodes. As a lot of these trees are no longer pollared, they have grown to very weird and impressive shapes: the first sidebranches have often almost as large diameters as the main stem. As a consequence of the huge weight of these branches, a lot of them have been torn or ruptured form the main stem, which leads to a lot of scattered huge decaying branches.

As this part of the Pyrenees receives a lot of annual rainfall, the huge trees are covered with epiphytes, which gives - especially the narrow valleys - almost an intact rainforest appearance. The old oaks are not only covered with the usual mosses, lichens and ferns, but very often small trees (oak, sorbus) and even heath and blueberries grow on top of the huge sidebranches.

Here's an image of an old oak, with blueberries growing on a massive sidebranch.

Finally, we end up with a blurry impression of the old growth forest.