Veracruz montane forests
RESOLVE 515
The Veracruz montane forests form a narrow belt of tropical montane cloud forest in eastern Mexico, draped across the eastern slopes of the southern Sierra Madre Oriental and the eastern Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt through the states of Hidalgo, Puebla, and Veracruz. These evergreen broadleaf forests close into a dense canopy of sweetgum (Liquidambar), oaks (Quercus), and tropical hornbeam (Carpinus tropicalis), with trunks and branches heavily laden with epiphytic orchids, bromeliads, mosses, and lichens. The climate is humid with summer rainfall and near year-round fog, the moisture that sustains the cloud forest. As the northernmost montane forest of its kind in Mexico, the ecoregion harbors a high share of Mesoamerica's endemic vertebrates, including the endemic greater bromeliad treefrog, but it is rated critical and endangered, with coffee plantations and cattle ranching the leading threats. For gardeners, several of its signature trees, notably sweetgum, native oaks, and cloudforest magnolia, are familiar ornamental and shade species.
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.
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.