The California montane chaparral and woodlands ecoregion covers the higher mountains of southern and central California — the Transverse, Peninsular, and Coast Ranges, including the San Bernardino, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, Santa Monica, and Santa Lucia Mountains — with disjunct blocks in northern Baja California, Mexico. Its Mediterranean climate brings hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, with mid-summer monsoonal thunderstorms that often form over the Transverse and Peninsular Ranges. Vegetation forms an elevation mosaic: chamise, manzanita, and scrub oak chaparral and oak woodlands give way upslope to pine and mixed-conifer forest and, on the highest peaks, subalpine communities. The region is notable for harboring eight endemic conifer species, and its flagship animal is the white-eared pocket mouse.

At a glance

About the mediterranean forests, woodlands & scrub biome

Regions of hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters supporting drought-adapted shrublands — chaparral, maquis, fynbos — and open woodlands. Fire is a natural shaping force, and these climates hold extraordinary plant diversity and endemism.

National refinement sub-regions

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 (1991-2020 climatology) via ArcGIS FeatureServer published current zone range, with the CHELSA mid-century warming delta applied for the projection. Plants whose stated range falls outside both the current and projected zone end up dropped; the rest land in one of the three buckets below.

Collections for this ecoregion

Curated multi-plant collections whose members all fit this ecoregion's zone range — no won't-grow members smuggled in. Overall fit class shown per collection is the weakest link across its members.

Related ecoregions