Tasmanian Central Highland forests
RESOLVE 177
The Tasmanian Central Highland forests occupy the Central Highlands, or Central Plateau, of Tasmania in southeastern Australia, a glaciated upland whose ice-age depressions hold Lake St Clair and countless smaller lakes and tarns. Lower slopes carry wet and dry sclerophyll forests and woodlands, while higher ground gives way to alpine conifer stands, montane grasslands, and distinctive cushion-plant moorlands, peatlands, and heathlands. Characteristic trees include the endemic conifers pencil pine (Athrotaxis cupressoides) and King Billy pine (Athrotaxis selaginoides), the southern beeches Nothofagus cunninghamii and the deciduous Nothofagus gunnii, and tree-line eucalypts such as Eucalyptus coccifera and Eucalyptus vernicosa. This is Tasmania's coldest region, with winter temperatures frequently dropping to or below freezing, snowfall most common in spring, and annual rainfall reaching up to about 2,000 mm in the west but much less in the eastern rain shadow of the plateau. Roughly a third of the ecoregion lies within protected areas, including Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park and the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. For cool-climate gardeners, the region is the native home of ornamental genera such as the slow-growing Athrotaxis conifers and the southern beeches (Nothofagus).
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.