The Mid-Atlantic US Coastal Savannas ecoregion forms the northern extension of the southeastern US conifer savannas, running up the Atlantic coastal plain from coastal Georgia through the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and small portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Its warm temperate landscape is dominated by fire-adapted conifers and wetlands: longleaf pine is the dominant savanna tree north to extreme southeastern Virginia, giving way to pond pine and pitch pine in shrubbier northern habitats, alongside Atlantic white cedar swamps, pocosins, Carolina bays, and bald cypress floodplain swamps. Much of the natural vegetation is adapted to frequent fire, with lightning strikes only slightly lower than the more southern Coastal Plain. Atlantic white cedar, a tree that can reach 1,000 years of age, is the flagship species. Part of the globally recognized North American Coastal Plain biodiversity hotspot, the region is now heavily altered, with 86% of its vegetation converted or degraded.

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.

National refinement sub-regions

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