The Central-Southern US Mixed Grasslands run north to south from central Nebraska through Kansas and Oklahoma into north-central Texas, a vast prairie marking the ecological transition from tallgrass to shortgrass plains. Its flat-to-rolling, wind-deposited terrain (about 400-1,220 m elevation) carries native mixed-grass prairie of tallgrasses such as big bluestem and Indiangrass alongside shorter grasses, and OneEarth notes it holds the greatest floristic complexity of all North American grasslands. The climate is subhumid warm continental to warm temperate, with annual precipitation ranging from roughly 300 to 812 mm. Each spring more than 500,000 sandhill cranes (about 80% of the world's population) gather along Nebraska's Platte River, though only about 1% of the ecoregion is protected.

At a glance

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.

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