Central Andean wet puna
RESOLVE 589
The Central Andean wet puna stretches across the high Andes of Peru and eastern Bolivia, blanketing plateaus, glacial valleys, and lake basins generally above 3,500 metres in elevation. Its dominant cover is high-elevation montane grassland woven from bunchgrass genera such as Festuca, Calamagrostis, Stipa, Agrostis, and Paspalum, interspersed with gnarled Polylepis woodlands, the giant rosette bromeliad Puya raimondii, and waterlogged cushion-plant bogs (bofedales) of species like Distichia muscoides. The climate is cold and seasonally wet, with nightly freezes year-round in the upper zones and a rainy season that lengthens from roughly two months in the south to about eight months in the north. All four South American camelids occur here (vicuna, llama, guanaco, and alpaca) alongside puma and Andean fox, and the ecoregion harbors many endemic birds, including the critically endangered royal cinclodes, which depends on the dwindling Polylepis forests now threatened by grazing, burning, and mining. For high, cold gardens the puna offers hardy native ornamentals, from the dramatic Puya to cool-season tussock grasses such as Festuca, Calamagrostis, and Stipa.
About the montane grasslands & shrublands biome
High-elevation grasslands, meadows, and shrublands above the treeline or in mountain basins, including alpine and páramo systems. Cool temperatures, intense sunlight, and specialized, often endemic flora characterize them.
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.