The Pyrenees conifer and mixed forests stretch along the Pyrenees mountains that divide Spain and France, taking in all of Andorra and Spanish regions including Aragon, Catalonia, and Navarre. The forests show strong altitudinal zonation: lower slopes carry Mediterranean-influenced woodland of evergreen oaks (Quercus) and maples (Acer), mid-elevations are dominated by European beech (Fagus sylvatica), chestnut (Castanea sativa), birch (Betula), and pines such as Scots pine and Pyrenean pine, while the highest forests are largely beech and silver fir (Abies alba). The climate marks a transition from the Mediterranean conditions to the south and east toward the humid temperate forests to the west and north, with warm summers and mild winters at lower elevations giving way to snow-covered peaks. The ecoregion holds about 3,500 native plant species, roughly 200 of them endemic, and its flagship species is the vulnerable, region-endemic Pyrenean frog. The ecoregion is considered Vulnerable: only about 10 percent lies within protected areas, and just 1 percent of the unprotected land still retains natural forest.

At a glance

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.

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.

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