Country

Russia: 49 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Forty-nine ecoregions reach Russia, spanning nearly the whole Palearctic sequence from the Pontic steppe and Caucasus mixed forests through the Sarmatic and Central European mixed forests, into the vast boreal belt - the East Siberian, West Siberian, and Scandinavian and Russian taiga together cover roughly three million square miles - and out to Arctic tundra units like the Taimyr-Central Siberian tundra and Wrangel Island Arctic desert. The gardening consequence is a continental gradient: mild broadleaf conditions in the far west and along the Black Sea and Ussuri coasts, severe winters and short seasons across the taiga, and essentially no woody-plant season on the tundra. Hardiness, not heat, is the selecting force almost everywhere, and cold-tested conifers, birches, and steppe perennials are the reliable backbone.