The Texas blackland prairies form a long, narrow belt of tallgrass prairie on fertile dark clay soils, running south from below the Red River past Dallas and Austin toward San Antonio in central Texas. Originally the uplands carried tallgrass prairie dominated by little bluestem and Indiangrass, with deciduous forest and woodland along rivers and creeks. The climate ranges from subhumid subtropical in the south to subhumid warm temperate, with hot summers, mild winters, and average annual rainfall of roughly 740 to 1,140 mm. The rich soils led to near-total conversion to cropland and cities: far less than 1% of the ecoregion remains in natural condition or is protected, making restoration the primary conservation option.

At a glance

About the temperate grasslands, savannas & shrublands biome

Temperate prairies, steppes, and pampas of grasses and forbs with few trees, under continental climates of hot summers and cold winters. Their deep, fertile soils have made them among the most extensively converted biomes for agriculture.

National refinement sub-regions

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 (1991-2020 climatology) via ArcGIS FeatureServer published 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