Chaparral is a shrubland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate and infrequent, high-intensity crown fires. Chaparral features summer-drought-tolerant plants with hard sclerophyllous evergreen leaves, as contrasted with the associated soft-leaved, drought-deciduous, scrub community of coastal sage scrub, found often on drier, southern facing slopes within the chaparral biome. Three other closely related chaparral shrubland systems occur in central Arizona, western Texas, and along the eastern side of central Mexico's mountain chains (mexical), all having summer rains in contrast to the Mediterranean climate of other chaparral formations. Chaparral comprises 9% of the California's wildland vegetation and contains 20% of its plant species. The name comes from the Spanish word chaparro, which translates to "place of the scrub oak".
The California chaparral and woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion of southwestern Oregon, northern, central, and southern California and northwestern Baja California (Mexico), located on the west coast of North America. It is an ecoregion of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome, and part of the Nearctic realm.
The Coulter pine or big-cone pine, Pinus coulteri, is a native of the coastal mountains of Southern California in the United States and northern Baja California in Mexico. Isolated groves are found as far north as Clearlake, California on the flanks of Mt. Konocti and Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. It is named after Thomas Coulter, an Irish botanist and physician. The Coulter pine produces the heaviest cone of any pine tree, up to 5 kg (11 lb).
Pinus ponderosa, commonly known as the ponderosa pine, bull pine, blackjack pine, western yellow-pine, or filipinus pine is a very large pine tree species of variable habitat native to mountainous regions of western North America. It is the most widely distributed pine species in North America.
The ecology of California can be understood by dividing the state into a number of ecoregions, which contain distinct ecological communities of plants and animals in a contiguous region. The ecoregions of California can be grouped into four major groups: desert ecoregions, Mediterranean ecoregions, forested mountains, and coastal forests.
The Modoc Plateau lies in the northeast corner of California as well as parts of Oregon and Nevada. Nearly 1,000,000 acres (400,000 ha) of the Modoc National Forest are on the plateau between the Medicine Lake Highlands in the west and the Warner Mountains in the east.
The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley area at its southern end.
California mixed evergreen forest is an plant community found in the mountain ranges of California and southwestern Oregon.
Aesculus californica, commonly known as the California buckeye or California horse-chestnut, is a species of buckeye native to California and southwestern Oregon.
The California Floristic Province (CFP) is a floristic province with a Mediterranean-type climate located on the Pacific Coast of North America with a distinctive flora similar to other regions with a winter rainfall and summer drought climate like the Mediterranean Basin. This biodiversity hotspot is known for being the home of the Sierran giant sequoia tree and its close relative the coast redwood. In 1996, the Province was designated as a biodiversity hotspot allowing it to join ranks among 33 other areas in the world with many endemic species. To be named a biodiversity hotspot, an area has to contain species and plant life that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. The California Floristic Province is home to over 3,000 species of vascular plants, 60% of which are endemic to the province.
California oak woodland is a plant community found throughout the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California in the United States and northwestern Baja California in Mexico. Oak woodland is widespread at lower elevations in coastal California; in interior valleys of the Coast Ranges, Transverse Ranges and Peninsular Ranges; and in a ring around the California Central Valley grasslands. The dominant trees are oaks, interspersed with other broadleaf and coniferous trees, with an understory of grasses, herbs, geophytes, and California native plants.
The Rocky Mountain Floristic Region, also known as the Rocky Mountain Floristic Province, is a floristic region within the Holarctic Kingdom in western North America delineated by Armen Takhtajan and Robert F. Thorne. The region extends from Kodiak Island in Alaska to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sierra Nevada in California. The Vancouverian Province comprises the coastal part of the region for its entire length, including the Pacific Coast Ranges, and the Rocky Mountain Province includes the Rocky Mountains and associated ranges. There are no endemic plant families in the region but many endemic genera and species.
The Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine forest is a forest plant community at an elevation of 2,000–2,700 metres (6,600–8,900 ft) in the U.S. state of Colorado, depending on soil moisture. It is an important temperate coniferous forest ecoregion, including some endemic wildlife and grass species that are only found in this ponderosa pine habitat.
The Klamath Mountains ecoregion of Oregon and California lies inland and north of the Coast Range ecoregion, extending from the Umpqua River in the north to the Sacramento Valley in the south. It encompasses the highly dissected ridges, foothills, and valleys of the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains. It corresponds to the Level III ecoregion designated by the Environmental Protection Agency and to the Klamath-Siskiyou forests ecoregion designated by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The Mediterranean California lower montane black oak–conifer forest is a major forest association and ecosystem of the California mixed evergreen forest bioregion in certain mountain ranges in California and southern Oregon in the Western United States; and Baja California in northwest Mexico.
The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning 7,900 square miles (20,000 km2) of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California. The ecoregion is part of the larger California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, and belongs to the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
An oak woodland is a plant community with a tree canopy dominated by oaks. In terms of canopy closure, oak woodlands are intermediate between oak savanna, which is more open, and oak forest, which is more closed. Although the community is named for the dominance of oak trees, the understory vegetation is often diverse and includes many species of grasses, sedges, forbs, ferns, shrubs, and other plants.
The flora of the Colorado Plateau and Canyonlands region of the Western United States.
