The sizzling summer of 1976 caused permanent changes to British forests, new research suggests.
Scientists found that the long dry spell that year - the UK's most intense drought between 1914 and 2006 - killed off many drought-sensitive beech trees.
Growth of the trees is still restricted more than 30 years later, a study in the journal Functional Ecology said.
The more drought-tolerant Sessile Oak survived better and is now dominating the beech.
“They are resistant up to a point and then we hit a tipping point and the system shows very severe impacts”, Prof Alistair JumpUniversity of Stirling
The scientific work was carried out at Lady Wood Park in the Wye Valley. This 45 hectare (111 acre) site is a national nature reserve and is attractive to researchers because it has been deliberately unmanaged since 1945.
Detailed forest surveys have been carried out in the park over the past 70 years and the ecologists were able to use these along with tree ring data to discover how the different tree species fared over the period.
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