Many people think that the forests they know from their neighbourhood are ‘nature’. However, almost all of our forests are production forests and have therefore been heavily modified by humans. Only a few people know what our ‘real’ forests look like.
The appearance of primary and old-growth forests differs considerably from managed forests and plantations ...

We give you some hints:

• In primary and old growth forests you often can find very large and very old trees 
• They give an impression of "chaos" and uncontrolled and diverse growth of trees and other plants
• The trees are usually very different - small and large, young and old grow side by side
• You will often find many standing and lying dead trees, especially if the forest is in a very mature stage of development 
• It often smells of moss and mould 
• You may discover signs of decay in the form of broken or deformed crowns or trunk and root rot 
• You will usually find several layers of tree crowns ... 
• ... but sometimes natural forests also form a ‘hall’ with trees of the same size, for example if a storm a long time ago knocked down all the trees here and the trees are now the same age
• You can discover gaps in the canopy and great structural diversity in the undergrowth 

The tree composition corresponds to the potential natural forest communities at the location - for example, mountain spruce near the tree line in the mountains, or beech mixed with fir in the valleys - or oaks on dry, warm slopes

However, primary forests are not always just ‘old’ and full of dead trees - rather, they show all the different development phases of a forest ... 

All the characteristics described above must be placed in the context of possible historical developments (such as disturbances caused by windthrow) and the respective ecological site conditions. For example, primary forests can have a uniform and more homogeneous structure after large-scale events such as windthrow or forest fires, as all trees have the same age and size after the ‘disturbance’ ...