Canterbury-Otago tussock grasslands
RESOLVE 190
The Canterbury-Otago tussock grasslands cover the dry eastern plains and inland basins of New Zealand's South Island, stretching between the Pacific coast and the Southern Alps across the Canterbury and Otago regions, taking in the Canterbury Plains, the Mackenzie Basin and the Maniototo. Lying in the rain shadow of the Alps, the ecoregion has a dry climate with warm summers and cold winters, and its highland basins are the driest ground of all, receiving less than 500mm of rain a year. Where coastal broadleaf and kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) forests once grew, fire and clearance have left open communities of drought- and fire-hardy native tussock grasses such as hard tussock (Festuca novae-zelandiae), silver tussock (Poa cita) and tall snow tussocks (Chionochloa). The grasslands shelter endemic reptiles including the Otago skink and grand skink, whose range has shrunk by roughly 90 percent through land modification, overgrazing, weeds and recurring fires. For gardeners, the region is home to ornamentally useful native genera such as the cypress-like shrub Hebe cupressoides and the spiky alpine herbs Aciphylla.
About the temperate grasslands, savannas & shrublands biome
Temperate prairies, steppes, and pampas of grasses and forbs with few trees, under continental climates of hot summers and cold winters. Their deep, fertile soils have made them among the most extensively converted biomes for agriculture.
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.