Among the phenotypic and functional traits of interest in a context of rapidly changing environmental conditions linked to anthropogenic global warming, fruiting data are often lacking, even though they are fundamental for assessing the adaptive capacities of species and for modeling their ecological niche and simulating their evolution. Inter-annual alternations of high and low fruiting and the correlation between this masting phenomenon and resource allocation to other functions, such as growth, are relatively poorly documented in forest trees.

This paper presents a long-term monitoring dataset containing observations of the annual production of female reproductive structures (strobili) over an 18-year period, combined with observations of the annual production of male flowers and cones, dendrometric data (circumference at breast height, total height, crown base heights) and tree health status, at individual tree level. The observations concern two major species of European lowland and mountain forest ecosystems, common beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and silver fir (Abies alba Mill.). The individual observations were made in a mountain forest located at the southern edge of the distribution range of these two species, along a marked altitude gradient [963 to 1521m] that makes this site a natural laboratory for deciphering processes of micro-geographical adaptation and plasticity: Mont Ventoux (France).

For financial reasons (long-term monitoring is dependent on shorter-term, project-based research funding), the number of trees monitored per year varies. For example, there are no fruiting data for 2008, 2009 and 2010 for common beech and 2022 for both species. Despite these short interruptions, the publication contains a total of 2247 cone observations made on 334 fir trees and 2694 fruiting observations made on 422 beech trees between 2006 and 2024.

The dataset contains 3 data files: - Fructification_data_Ventoux.csv : Data on fruit production, dendrometry (CBH and Ht), health status and mortality; - MaleFlowers_data_Ventoux.csv : Male flower inflorescence production ; - FructificationBiomass_data_Ventoux.csv : cone biomass estimation data, as the “cone length” proxi. Common variables (Original_ID, Taxon_Name and Year) make it easy to compare data from the 3 files. The dataset also contains a documentation file describing the variables measured and observed, that are present in the 3 data files.