The Red River Freshwater Swamp Forests occupy the freshwater portion of the Red River (Hong River) delta in northern Vietnam, a flat lowland landscape centered on Hanoi and reaching the coast at Haiphong. These swamp forests grew on permanently or seasonally flooded mineral soils and were originally dominated by trees of the genus Melaleuca, the "paperbarks" named for their thin, papery layers of bark. The climate is a dry-winter humid subtropical type, with hot, wet summers whose rainfall far exceeds that of the drier winter months. Once highly productive and home to a diverse fauna of freshwater fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, the ecoregion is now considered ecologically extinct, with almost the entire delta converted to rice paddies, cities, and industry and only a tiny fraction left in a natural state. For gardeners, the paperbark Melaleuca that defined these wetlands is the same genus widely grown elsewhere as an ornamental and tolerant of wet, waterlogged ground.

At a glance

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.

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

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.

Related ecoregions