Rakiura Island temperate forests
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The Rakiura Island temperate forests cover Stewart Island (Rakiura), the land just south of New Zealand's South Island, and rank among the most southern temperate rainforests in the world. Lowland slopes carry podocarp-broadleaf forest dominated by rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum), kamahi (Weinmannia racemosa), and southern rata (Metrosideros umbellata), with an understory of daisy-trees (Olearia) and Coprosma, while sub-alpine manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) scrub takes over above roughly 300 meters; unlike the nearby mainland, the island lacks Nothofagus and Libocedrus. The climate is cool, wet, and oceanic, with high rainfall and few prolonged dry spells. Isolation and the absence of some introduced predators have helped many vulnerable native species persist, most famously the flightless nocturnal kakapo parrot and the Stewart Island kiwi, and Rakiura National Park protects about 85 percent of the island. For gardeners, several signature genera here, including Metrosideros, Olearia, Coprosma, and Leptospermum, are widely grown as ornamentals.
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.