Forêt de Quatre Vaux

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Forêt de Quatre Vaux is a wooded area in the Charente department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region . The forest is located around 30 kilometers northeast of the prefectural city of Angoulême .

etymology

The French vaux is the antiquated plural of val meaning valleys . Forêt de Quatre Vaux can therefore be represented in German as a Viertälerwald .

geography

The Forêt de Quatre Vaux on an autumn morning - view from the south of the hamlet of Les Houillères, which belongs to the municipality of Agris

The privately owned Forêt de Quatre Vaux, sometimes referred to as the Bois de Quatre-Vaux , is located 5 kilometers southwest of Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure and 5 kilometers north of La Rochefoucauld . It mainly belongs to the municipality of Les Pins , but touches the municipality of Agris in the southwest , the municipality of Rivières in the south and the municipality of Taponnat-Fleurignac in the southeast .

The forest has a base area of ​​3.98 square kilometers (or 398 hectares) and is 2.5 kilometers long in the northwest-southeast direction. Its width in northeast-southwest direction is 1.5 kilometers. It lies at an average of 120 meters above sea level, but reaches 139 meters at its highest point. Its lowest position is at 80 meters.

In the south, the Forêt de Quatre Vaux is bordered by the Bellone valley - a right tributary of the Tardoire . Since this is already lost at Taponnat in the Karst of La Rochefoucauld , this is a dry valley that only carries water during exceptional rainfall. The valley lies in the east at 90 meters above sea level, in the west at its confluence with the Tardoire only at 80 meters. Four other, but much smaller, dry valleys are sunk into the plateau and flow south into the Bellone. Incidentally, this fact gave the forest its name.

Immediately south of the district of les Cosses on the northern slope of the Bellone valley lies the Perrats grotto , in which Agris' helmet - a spectacular, gilded, Celtic helmet - was found in 1981 .

The topographical northern boundary of the forest forms the valley of the Bonnieure , which flows in a northwest direction . In the east runs a rift structure , the northeast-trending depression of La Rochefoucauld-Chasseneuil , through which the railway line from Angoulême to Confolens and Limoges and the N 141 runs. The south-western edge is formed by the Bellone, which then flows into the Tardoire north of Agris as a right branch . In the west, the forest is not clearly delimited, but gradually loses height towards the confluence of the Bonnieure and Tardoire near Saint-Angeau . The course of the D 175 is usually viewed as the western boundary for the core area of ​​the forest.

Transport links

On the D 36 in the municipality of Les Pins

The Forêt de Quatre Vaux is crossed by the D 11, which connects Angoulême or Rouillac with Chasseneuil. The D 11 overcomes the Bellone river valley by means of several curves. The D 36 passes in the northeast, the D 45 in the north. The D 45 follows the former route of the Roman road from Saintes to Lyon . In the west runs the D 175, which crosses the eponymous hamlet Quatre Vaux of the municipality of Les Pins.

geology

The Forêt de Quatre Vaux geomorphologically forms a plateau that has an average height of 130 meters. The plateau is underlain by flat Jurassic limestone , which belongs to the northern Aquitaine basin . The limestone is covered in the hanging wall by tertiary , colluvial clay sediments. The Jurassic sequence begins with Bathonium , which is overlaid by Callovium , and ends with Oxfordium . It is karstified and forms the northern edge of the Karst of La Rochefoucauld.

The Bathonian is pending to Taponnac on the eastern edge of Forst and east of Les Pins on the left side of the valley of the Bonnieure and consists of fine-grained white limestone with chert nodules . The callovium - cream-colored, fine-grain limestone containing chert tubers - appears in the valley of the Bellone and on the left bank of the Bonnieure around Les Pins. The gray-blue, fine-grain limestones of the Oxfordium follow the Callovium and can also be seen in the Bellone valley and in a small side valley near Les Chaumelles .

The covering Tertiary consists of colluvial sediments that arose from the erosion of the Massif Central, which is only 10 kilometers to the east , but which have also incorporated elements of the Jurassic sediments . These are ocher-colored to yellow clays mixed with sands, gravel and chert from the Jura. The clays can appear reddish when exposed to iron oxides. In general, this colluvium is more sandy in the east, but the clay content increases towards the west.

ecology

At Les Frauds in the eastern part of the forest

The Forêt de Quatre Vaux consists mainly of deciduous forest , which is dominated by oaks ( sessile oak Quercus petraea ), hornbeams (hornbeam Carpinus betulus ) and chestnuts ( sweet chestnut Castanea sativa ). The forest was previously dominated by an almost pure oak forest, but conifers ( maritime pine Pinus pinaster and Scots pine Pinus sylvestris ) and deciduous trees are also being reforested. It now shows the following habitat distribution: acid-loving oak forest (30%), oak-hornbeam mixed forest (20%), coniferous plantations (20%), deciduous tree plantations (10%), dry heather (10%), wet heather (5%) and wet meadows ( 5%). More encountered species are silver birch Betula verrucosa , European holly Ilex aquifolium , aspen Populus tremula , the willow Salix atrocinerea and wild service tree Sorbus torminalis .

The lower areas of the forest have interesting flora - with the only location of lobed shield fern Polystichum aculeatum in the Charente. Other ferns include awn shield fern Polystichum setiferum , common thorn fern Dryopteris carthusiana , broad-leaved thorn fern Dryopteris dilatata and Scolopendrium officinale . Notable among the flowering plants are Arum italicum Arum italicum , Woodruff Asperula odorata , White asphodel Asphodelus albus , bleach sedge Carex pallescens , lily of the valley Convallaria majalis , Atlantic Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta , Euphorbia angularis , Filipendula vulgaris Filipendula vulgaris , Blood St. John's Wort Hypericum androsaemum , Ordinary Goldnessel Lamium galeobdolon , blackening pea Lathyrus niger , Forster woodrush Luzula forsteri and Hairy wood-rush Luzula pilosa , Bastard Balm Melittis melissophyllum , forest millet effusum Milium , Male orchid Orchis mascula , Pyrenees-Milchstern pyrenaicum Ornithogalum , phyteuma spicatum Phyteuma spicatum , the cinquefoil Potentilla montana , Langblättriges lungwort Pulmonaria longifolia , forest Buttercup Ranunculus nemorosus , field rose Rosa arvensis , burdock madder Rubia peregrina , butcher's broom Ruscus aculeatus , Low salsify Scorzonera humilis , Nodular comfrey Symphytum tuberosum and the gorse Ulex europaeus and Ulex minor and Ulex nanus .

A rich population of birds of prey such as the goshawk Accipiter gentilis , the sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus , the hen harrier Circus cyaneus and owls such as the long- eared owl Asio otus or the tawny owl Strix aluco nest in the forests . Occasionally, deer ( red deer Cervus elaphus ) can also be encountered that have migrated from the Bois de Bel-Air further north . Other mammals are roe deer Capreolus capreolus , European badger Meles meles , ermine Mustela erminea , pine marten Martes martes , the field mouse Pitymys pyrenaicus , pygmy shrew Sorex minutus and wild boar Sus scrofa .

Together with the Bois de Bel-Air and the Bonnieure Valley, the Forêt de Quatre Vaux forms a 5,537 hectare ecological protection zone (ZNIEFF type 2). Within this protection zone, the Forêt de Quatre Vaux in turn represents its own 871.8 hectare Type 1 ZNIEFF.

history

The Forêt de Quatre Vaux was once a hunting area of Charles X. He is said to have chased a wolf from here to the mouth of the Gironde .

Before the French Revolution , the forest area belonged to the lords of Les Pins. It was then sold as a Bien national and two thirds were acquired by the current owners and one third by the municipality of Les Pins.

See also

literature

  • A. Bambier et al .: La Rochefoucauld 1831 . In: Carte géologique de la France at 1/50 000 . BRGM, 1983.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean-Hippolyte Michon: Statistique monumentale de la Charente . Derache, Paris 1844, p. 334 .
  2. ↑ Eugène Chapus: Les chasses de Charles X . 1837, p. 235 .

Coordinates: 45 ° 48 ′ 10 ″  N , 0 ° 22 ′ 40 ″  E