The Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests form a narrow temperate band on steep mountain slopes between roughly 2,000 and 3,000 meters, running from the Kali Gandaki River gorge in central Nepal through Sikkim and West Bengal, Bhutan, and India's Arunachal Pradesh into adjoining Myanmar and China. Two forest types define it: temperate evergreen stands of oaks, rhododendrons, magnolia, and cinnamon, and temperate deciduous forest dominated by maple, walnut, alder, and birch. The climate is strongly monsoonal, with most of the region's rainfall (over 2,000 mm a year) falling between May and September. Sitting where several floristic zones meet, it is exceptionally rich in oaks and rhododendrons, with Sikkim holding over fifty rhododendron species and Bhutan more than sixty, and it shelters wildlife such as the clouded leopard and red panda. For gardeners, this is the native heartland of many prized ornamentals, including Rhododendron, Magnolia, and Himalayan maple (Acer campbellii).

At a glance

About the temperate broadleaf & mixed forests biome

Four-season forests of deciduous hardwoods — oak, maple, beech — often mixed with conifers, shaped by warm summers and cold winters. Trees leaf out in spring and color in autumn; the generally fertile soils have made these forests heavily settled and farmed.

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's CHELSA-derived 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