The Westland temperate forests stretch along the central West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, a narrow lowland belt hemmed between the Tasman Sea and the Southern Alps. These globally rare temperate rainforests run almost unbroken from the mountains to the shore and hold more than half of New Zealand's remaining lowland podocarp and broadleaf forest, with rimu, kahikatea, totara and matai rising above kamahi (Weinmannia racemosa) and southern rata (Metrosideros umbellata). The climate is mild and exceptionally wet, as moist westerlies lift over the Alps to drop roughly 3,000 millimeters of rain a year on the coast and far more inland, where the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers descend below the treeline into the greenery. Much of the region is protected within Westland Tai Poutini National Park, and it is the last stronghold of the Okarito brown kiwi.

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