Western European broadleaf forests
RESOLVE 686
The Western European broadleaf forests ecoregion stretches across much of Western and Central Europe, covering large parts of France, Germany, and the Czech Republic along with portions of Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and South Limburg in the Netherlands, and includes upland terrain such as the Massif Central, Jura Mountains, Bavarian Plateau, and Bohemian Massif. Its natural cover is temperate broadleaf and mixed forest dominated by mountain beech (Fagus sylvatica), together with oaks (Quercus robur and Quercus petraea), spruce, alder, maple, ash, linden, and birch. The climate is moist temperate, with annual rainfall around 1,000 mm in the Jura valleys and exceeding 2,000 mm at higher elevations. Much of the original lowland forest has been cleared over the past two centuries for cereal and grape cultivation, leaving heavily fragmented second-growth woods; the Eurasian lynx has been reintroduced here, and the short-toed snake eagle serves as the ecoregion's flagship species. For gardeners, several of its native trees, including European beech, oak, maple, ash, and linden, are long-standing ornamental and landscape genera.
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.