The Eastern Canadian forests stretch across eastern Quebec, southern Labrador, and the island of Newfoundland, with the mainland resting on the ancient Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield. This boreal forest is dominated by balsam fir and black spruce, with white spruce along salt-sprayed coasts and paper birch and aspen colonizing burned areas. The climate is cool and wet, with harsh winters inland and milder, snowier, fog-prone conditions on maritime Newfoundland. Newfoundland's serpentine barrens, almost bare rock toxic to most plants, host rare species found nowhere else, and the region supports moose, woodland caribou, lynx, and wolves; only about 4 percent is protected, though much remains as wildland.

At a glance

About the boreal forests/taiga biome

The vast northern forest belt of spruce, fir, pine, and larch, defined by long, severe winters and short growing seasons. Often underlain by permafrost and wetlands, the taiga forms one of the world’s largest terrestrial carbon stores.

National refinement sub-regions

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's NRCan Plant Hardiness Zone 1981-2010 GeoTIFF 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