The Southern Korea evergreen forests stretch along the warm southern margin of the Korean Peninsula in South Korea, reaching the Gotjawal Forest on Jeju Island in the East China Sea and Ulleungdo Island in the Sea of Japan. The natural cover is evergreen broadleaf laurel forest, dominated by members of the laurel family such as Machilus, Neolitsea, and Cinnamomum and by oaks and their relatives including Quercus, Castanopsis, and Cyclobalanopsis, with the camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora) and Camellia japonica also characteristic. The climate is humid and temperate, shaped by the East Asian monsoon that brings warm, rainy summers, with about two-thirds of the roughly 1,000 mm of annual rainfall arriving between June and September, while winters are drier and mild. Much of the original lowland forest has been cleared, and only a small fraction of the ecoregion lies within protected areas, though several national parks safeguard remaining mainland and island habitat. Gardeners will recognize familiar ornamentals native here, including Camellia japonica, Fatsia japonica, and ivy-family members such as Hedera.

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