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We examined the performance of older even-aged plantations to check the validity of three of the most fundamental tenets of forest site productivity: the height–age site index, Eichhorn's rule and the thinning response hypothesis. We assessed the condition of >14 000 trees in 60 randomly selected plantations to determine whether the stands were following site productivity expectations and growth and yield projections. We evaluated the health status of all the trees by height class (<2, 2–4 and >4 m tall). We found strong evidence that older, managed plantations are subject to damage agents that are targeting dominant trees. We found natural ingress was not filling voids created by loss of planted trees. Our findings were clearly in conflict with the assumptions of low and stable levels of loss of dominant trees in aging plantations. The tendency of forest growth models to emphasize stability and predictability …