The Taiheiyo evergreen forests stretch along the Pacific (Taiheiyo) side of Japan, covering parts of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu along with smaller islands such as Tsushima in the Korea Strait. Warmed and humidified by the Japan Current, the region has mild winters and a long growing season that historically supported evergreen broadleaf, or laurel, forest, giving way to oak forest further inland and to montane deciduous forest at higher elevations. Characteristic canopy trees include Castanopsis cuspidata and Persea (Machilus) thunbergii near the coast, with evergreen oaks common inland and Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) flowering in the understory. The forests shelter distinctive wildlife including the Japanese macaque, Japanese weasel, and the endemic Japanese serow, a goat-antelope, as well as birds such as the fairy pitta and copper pheasant. Because this belt holds Japan's largest cities, including Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Nagoya, most of the original forest has been cleared and converted to agriculture and urban land.

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