Oaxacan montane forests
RESOLVE 487
The Oaxacan montane forests cloak the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca, the eastern Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and the Sierra de Chiconquiaco in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz. The predominant habitat is tropical montane cloud forest, a structurally diverse canopy mixing temperate North American (Nearctic) and tropical trees that includes oaks (Quercus), sweetgum (Liquidambar), Clethra, Cinnamomum, Carpinus, and Styrax, draped in abundant epiphytic mosses, orchids, and ferns. The climate is humid year-round with mild mean annual temperatures of roughly 17 to 19 degrees Celsius that fall with elevation, ranging from tropical to temperate across three seasons. Roughly 30 to 35 percent of its species are endemic, and the forests hold some of the country's highest reptile and amphibian diversity, with the dwarf jay as a flagship species; about 45 percent of the ecoregion remained forested as of 2017, under pressure from agriculture, grazing, and logging. For gardeners, the native palette here spans familiar ornamentals such as oaks, sweetgum, Clethra, Styrax, redbud (Cercis), and a rich community of orchids.
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.
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.