European Atlantic mixed forests
RESOLVE 664
The European Atlantic mixed forests stretch along the Atlantic edge of continental Europe, spanning France, Belgium, the Netherlands, northwestern Germany, and western Denmark, with the terrain mostly flat lowland apart from the hills of Brittany. Mixed oak woodland is the characteristic vegetation, with pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) joined by birches (Betula pendula and Betula pubescens) on acidic soils and by beech (Fagus sylvatica) elsewhere, while large areas of poor sandy ground have been planted with Scots pine in the north and maritime pine further south. The climate is temperate and maritime, moderated by the Gulf Stream, with mean annual temperatures of roughly 9 to 12 degrees Celsius from north to south and annual precipitation between about 700 and 1,000 millimeters. Centuries of human activity have converted most of the region's forests, dunes, and wetlands to fields, pastures, and plantations, and only around 16 percent of the ecoregion lies in protected areas; native mammals such as red deer, roe deer, and wild boar persist, with wolves and lynx returning to parts of the range, while the European mink here is considered critically endangered. For gardeners, the region's native flora includes ornamental woody genera such as oak, birch, and beech that are well suited to cool, humid maritime conditions.
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.
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.