The Sri Lanka lowland rain forests cover the wet southwestern quarter of the island of Sri Lanka, occupying the perhumid lowlands below about 1,000 metres in elevation. These tall evergreen forests are built around two characteristic tree communities: a Dipterocarpus-dominated type (including Dipterocarpus zeylanicus and Dipterocarpus hispidus) and a Mesua-Doona type, with emergent crowns reaching roughly 45 metres and a wealth of endemic dipterocarps in the genera Doona, Shorea, and Stemonoporus. The climate is warm and consistently wet, driven by the southwest monsoon from May to September that delivers more than 5,000 mm of rain a year, with temperatures holding between about 27 and 30 degrees Celsius and humidity routinely above 75 percent. Thanks to long isolation from mainland India, more than 70 percent of Sri Lanka's endemic plants and animals depend on this ecoregion, which also supports the world's highest density of amphibian species; reduced to scattered fragments and rated critically endangered, its finest surviving block is the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Gardeners may recognise its flagship tree, the ironwood Mesua ferrea (Sri Lanka's national tree), which is grown elsewhere as an ornamental.
Marker placed inside the RESOLVE 2017 polygon at 6.8°N, 80.4°E.
Climate snapshot for this ecoregion
°C
°F
Current zone range (2011–2040)
13a-13b
Plotwright
CHELSA-derived typical winter month at this ecoregion's bbox grid.
Projected (2041–2070)
13a-13b
Plotwright
Where the CHELSA models say the typical winter month is heading.
Average warming this ecoregion is on track for: +3.1°F by mid-century. SSP3-7.0 (current trajectory) · CHELSA v2.1 bio06 sampled across 10 of 10 points within this ecoregion's bounding box.
At a glance
Dominant biome
Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
Realm
Indomalayan
Approximate area
4,846 sq mi
Conservation tier
Nature Could Reach Half Protected (Dinerstein NNH 2)
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
No catalog plants intersect this ecoregion's zone range. As the catalog grows to cover this region's climate band, suggestions will surface here.
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
Other tropical & subtropical moist broadleaf forests ecoregions to explore: