This dataset contains the list of plant occurrences and geographical and environmental attributes of the vegetation-plots analyzed in the paper titled “Phylogenetic structure of European forest vegetation” by Padullés Cubino et al. (2021; Journal of Biogeography; DOI: 10.1111/jbi.14046). The dataset contains 3 tables: “Table_taxa.csv”: It includes the list of angiosperm plant taxa in selected vegetation plots. “Table_sites.csv”: It includes data on the environmental variables of plots, their classification into different forest types, their location in 1o × 1o grid cells, and the reference to the original datasets archived in the European Vegetation Archive (EVA; http://euroveg.org/eva-database-participating-databases). “Metadata.csv”: It includes a description of the fields found in the two previous tables.