Cantabrian mixed forests
RESOLVE 648
The Cantabrian mixed forests stretch across southwestern Europe, running along the coastal Cantabrian Mountains and Galician Massif of northern Spain, south into northern Portugal, and northward through the westernmost Pyrenees into southwestern France. Oak and beech woodlands predominate, with lowlands of English oak (Quercus robur), sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), and European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) giving way to upland forests of sessile and Pyrenean oak (Quercus petraea and Quercus pyrenaica) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica), interspersed with montane heaths. The climate is mild and humid Atlantic, transitional between the Mediterranean and oceanic zones, with cold, snowy winters and more Mediterranean conditions in Galicia. This is the far-southwestern stronghold of the brown bear and shelters the critically endangered European mink, the rare Pyrenean desman, and the Cantabrian capercaillie, with Picos de Europa National Park alone hosting many orchid species. Gardeners may recognize natives such as sweet chestnut and the heathers of its montane heathlands.
About the temperate broadleaf & mixed forests biome
Four-season forests of deciduous hardwoods — oak, maple, beech — often mixed with conifers, shaped by warm summers and cold winters. Trees leaf out in spring and color in autumn; the generally fertile soils have made these forests heavily settled and farmed.
Collections for this ecoregion
No curated collection's plants all fit this ecoregion's zone range. We surface a collection only when every member would grow here — partial fits get filtered out rather than mislead. As the catalog and the curated set both grow, this section will fill in.