No systematic effects of sampling direction on climate-growth relationships in a large-scale, multi-species tree-ring data set

•Direction-specific climate signals were investigated using cores from 22 sites.•International (10 countries), multi-species (8 species) tree-ring network.•Signal strength, climate correlations and Principal Component Gradient Analysis.•No systematic directional bias introduced in high-pass filtered ring-width series.•Directional effects negligible for sites within forests in flat terrain.