New Zealand South Island temperate forests
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The New Zealand South Island temperate forests (also mapped as the Southland temperate forests) cover the southernmost lowlands and adjacent highlands of New Zealand's South Island, spanning the Otago and Southland regions and including The Catlins, the Takitimu Mountains, and the Longwood Range. Original cover was a mix of broadleaf trees and ancient podocarp conifers, with kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) common in swampy ground and rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and totara (Podocarpus totara) on drier sites, while southern beech (Nothofagus, including silver beech) dominated higher inland slopes; red tussock grass (Chionochloa rubra) prevailed in open ground and expanded as forest was cleared. These podocarp and beech communities are a living legacy of the Gondwana supercontinent, reflecting New Zealand's long isolation. Most of the original forest has been lost, and remaining blocks are now safeguarded by reserves such as Catlins Conservation Park, though introduced predators including ship rats, stoats, and possums continue to threaten native birds like the yellowhead (mohua) and the flagship tui.
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.