Kayah-Karen montane rain forests
RESOLVE 237
The Kayah-Karen montane rain forests stretch along the mountainous border between Myanmar and Thailand, following the northern Tenasserim Range and neighboring chains such as the Dawna and Karen Hills, where karst ridges climb past 2,000 meters. The forest is a dense, multi-layered evergreen canopy that shifts with altitude: teak, Dipterocarpus, and oak dominate the lower slopes, giving way to Castanopsis, Quercus, Lithocarpus, and Schima higher up, with rhododendrons crowning the highest elevations. The climate is warm and seasonally wet, with annual rainfall around 2,000 mm driven by the Bay of Bengal monsoon, so west-facing Myanmar slopes are far wetter than the drier, rain-shadowed Thai side. It is a remarkably rich Indomalayan ecoregion, home to nearly 170 mammal species and 568 birds, including the endemic Burmese yuhina and Kitti's hog-nosed bat, one of the world's smallest mammals; roughly 27% of the ecoregion lies within protected areas. For gardeners, its native rhododendrons and Castanopsis and Schima trees are familiar ornamental and woodland genera.
About the tropical & subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome
Warm, wet, highly productive forests — including tropical rainforests — with closed canopies, near year-round growing seasons, and the richest terrestrial biodiversity on Earth. Low seasonality and high rainfall sustain dense, layered vegetation from canopy to forest floor.
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.
Climate-resilient picks · 4
These plants fit this ecoregion today AND remain in range under the mid-century SSP3-7.0 projection. Lead with these for a planting that holds up as the climate shifts.
Currently suited · 48
These plants fit the ecoregion as it is today, but the mid-century projection moves them outside their stated zone range — plan for them to struggle by 2070.
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.