The Valdivian temperate forests stretch down the southern cone of South America, occupying a narrow strip in Chile and Argentina between the western slope of the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. They are dominated by evergreen southern beeches of the genus Nothofagus alongside long-lived conifers, including the alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides) and the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), over a dense understory of Chusquea bamboos, ferns, and the giant-leaved Gunnera tinctoria. The climate is shaped by the prevailing westerlies, and orographic rainfall climbs from around 1,000 mm a year at the northern edge to more than 6,000 mm in the south. These are the only temperate rainforests in South America, where the alerce ranks among the tallest and longest-lived trees on the continent and roughly half of the woody plant species are found nowhere else. Gardeners may recognize Chile's national flower, the climbing copihue (Lapageria rosea), as a native of these forests.

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

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