Jällsjö, Naturreservat

Jällsjö is a hilly forest area consisting mainly of older beech forest. The reserve is just over a kilometre from Åkulla beech forests, which is one of Sweden's foremost beech forest areas. There are no marked trails in Jällsjö, but it is relatively easy to walk around in the sparse beech forest.
Jällsjö is just over a kilometer from Åkulla beech forests, which have more than 800 hectares of protected deciduous forests. Åkulla bokskogar is the collective name for a dozen similar nature reserves located in the same area and is today one of the largest beech forest areas left in Halland.

The age of the trees varies

Beech dominates in Jällsjö, but there is also some mountain oak up on the heights and at the edges of open land. Here the ground is covered with bilberry. The age of the trees varies, there are old trees that are around 150 years old but also trees that are about 40 years old. There is also an area of deciduous swamp forest in the reserve.

Uncommon and endangered species

In several parts of the reserve there are old, rotten and dead trees, the latter in the form of flames, dry branches and stumps. Many rare forest species are dependent on dead wood. The wood is broken down by various fungi, which makes it easier for insect species that use the wood in different ways. The insects in turn attract birds, which search for food in the decaying wood. In Jällsjö, both red-listed species and forest signal species have been found, including the trap moss, flat feather moss, tree porella and beech spring lichen.

Traces from the past

There are many ancient remains in the area. In the beech forests there are three areas of fossil arable land, mainly in the form of cairns, and in the central parts of the area there are two hollow ways. When an ancient farmer was clearing a field, he removed the stones that were in the way of cultivation and placed them in cairns. Hollow ways are ancient paths formed by the erosion of paths by human shoes, cattle hooves and wagon wheels as they struggled up the slopes.