Central American montane forests
RESOLVE 451
The Central American montane forests form an archipelago of more than 40 scattered highland "islands" running from Chiapas in southern Mexico through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras into northern Nicaragua, perched at elevations of roughly 1,500 to 4,000 meters. Their vegetation is a mix of northern and southern elements: broadleaved evergreen stands dominated by oaks (Quercus), interspersed with conifers such as juniper (Juniperus), Cupressus, and Taxus, grading into subalpine grasslands at the highest reaches. The climate is humid and cool, with heavy annual rainfall of about 2,000 to 4,000 millimeters, persistent cloud cover, and regular nighttime frosts at the upper elevations from December to March. Because the mountaintops are so isolated, plant endemism is exceptionally high, reaching up to 70 percent on the larger islands, and the ecoregion is home to the flagship horned guan and an endemic subspecies of the resplendent quetzal. Much of the lower slopes has been cleared for coffee, cattle, and subsistence farming, leaving the habitat fragmented and only partly protected. For temperate-mountain gardeners, the native palette here includes cold-hardy oaks, pines, junipers, and lupines (Lupinus).
About the tropical & subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome
Warm, wet, highly productive forests — including tropical rainforests — with closed canopies, near year-round growing seasons, and the richest terrestrial biodiversity on Earth. Low seasonality and high rainfall sustain dense, layered vegetation from canopy to forest floor.
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.