Kinabalu montane alpine meadows

A warm-climate edible structure palette for seasonal dry forests, savannas, and frost-free gardens that need shade, food value, and drought recovery.

A frost-free edible palette for humid subtropical and tropical gardens: fruiting canopy, understory crops, edible roots, and container-friendly patio plants.

A colorful warm-climate screen and hedge palette for frost-light gardens: flowering shrubs, scrambling color, wildlife nectar, and dry-season structure.

The Altai alpine meadow and tundra ecoregion crowns the high Altai Mountains where the borders of Russia, Kazakhstan, China, and Mongolia meet, sitting above the conifer treeline in Central Asia's northernmost ranges. Above the treeline, low-alpine meadows mix grasses such as Stipa feather grass and clumping Festuca with herbaceous wildflowers, dwarf birch (Betula rotundifolia) in wetter northern areas, and sedge-meadows of Kobresia and Carex, giving way to sparse moss, lichen, and creeping cushion plants on the highest plateaus. The climate has a distinctly arctic character, with brief temperate summers, extreme cold winters, and a tundra-like regime where no month averages above 10 degrees Celsius. The ecoregion supports apex predators including snow leopards, lynx, gray wolves, and wolverines, with the vulnerable Altai argali wild sheep serving as a flagship species. Higher slopes also host hardy ornamental and medicinal natives such as dwarf rhododendrons, saxifrage, rhodiola, juniper, and honeysuckle.

The Angolan montane forest-grassland mosaic occupies the west-central highlands of Angola, running along the inland margin of the escarpment some 50 to 100 km from the coast across Huambo, Cuanza Sul, and Huila provinces, and crowned by isolated peaks such as Mount Moco, Mount Mepo, and Mount Lubangue that all rise above 2,500 meters. Open montane grassland dominates above roughly 1,600 meters, studded with Protea sugarbushes and Erica shrubs and grasses such as Themeda triandra, while small forest patches survive in humid ravines and on higher slopes where yellowwood (Podocarpus latifolius) shares an irregular 8-to-15-meter canopy with trees like Polyscias fulva and Ilex mitis. The climate brings wet summers with mist and rainfall through much of the year, though dry-season fires are common and frosts occur on the highest ground. The highlands support dozens of endemic and near-endemic species, including the flagship Angola cave-chat and the threatened Swierstra's francolin, yet the ecoregion is rated Critical/endangered and contains no protected areas. For gardeners the region is the native home of ornamental staples such as Protea, Erica, and Podocarpus.

The Australian Alps montane grasslands occupy the highest reaches of the Great Dividing Range in southeast Australia, spanning the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Victoria, and form the only ecoregion on the continent with true alpine ecosystems. Above the snow gum treeline of Eucalyptus pauciflora and black sallee (E. stellulata) lies a mosaic of Poa snow-grass tussock grasslands, alpine herbfields, heath, and sphagnum bogs, dotted with shrubs such as Grevillea, Prostanthera, Orites, and Hovea and the mountain plum-pine (Podocarpus lawrencei), the only alpine conifer on the Australian mainland. The climate is harsh and alpine, with prolonged winter snow cover, cold windy winters, and a pronounced winter dry spell, and the massif captures a large share of the continent's rainfall. It shelters cold-adapted endemics including the mountain pygmy possum (Burramys parvus), which hibernates under the snow, and the black-and-yellow corroboree frog (Pseudophryne corroboree), and most of the range now lies within large contiguous national parks such as Kosciuszko, Namadgi, and Alpine, though feral horses and deer, fire, and a warming climate threaten its specialised flora and fauna. Several genera native here, notably Grevillea and the mint bushes (Prostanthera), are familiar to gardeners as cold-hardy ornamentals.

The Central Andean dry puna spans the high Altiplano of the southern Andes across Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, occupying the arid zone between the tree line and the permanent snow line east of the Atacama Desert. Its vegetation is mostly high-elevation grassland dominated by bunchgrasses of the genera Stipa and Festuca, with dry shrublands lower down and scattered Polylepis woodlands at higher elevations; this includes Polylepis tarapacana, the woody plant that grows at the highest elevations in the world. The climate is dry and cold, ranging from cold steppe to cold desert and receiving less than 400 millimeters of rainfall annually, and the landscape is studded with volcanoes and vast salt flats such as Uyuni, Coipasa, and Atacama. Wild camelids including the vicuna roam the puna, the endangered Andean cat is the flagship species, and the region's saline lakes and bofedal wetlands support Andean, James's, and Chilean flamingos. Cushion-forming alpine genera such as Werneria and Nototriche, along with hardy high-altitude Senecio shrubs, are among the cold-adapted plants native here.

The Central Andean puna is a high-elevation montane grassland and shrubland ecoregion of the southern Andes, stretching from southern Peru through Bolivia into northern Chile and Argentina, generally between about 3,200 and 6,600 meters above sea level. Its landscape of open meadows, plateaus, high lakes, and snow-capped peaks is dominated by tussock or bunchgrass grasslands built from genera such as Calamagrostis, Agrostis, and Festuca, dotted with herbs, moss, and lichen, and accented by Polylepis (queñoa) woodland, Azorella cushion plants, and the giant bromeliad Puya raimondii. The climate is cold and semi-arid, with annual temperatures ranging from below freezing to about 15 degrees Celsius and yearly rainfall of roughly 250 to 500 millimeters. The region remains an important refuge for hardy Andean wildlife, including the vicuna, guanaco, chinchilla, and its flagship bird, Darwin's rhea, though habitat is increasingly pressured by grazing, burning, mining, and agriculture. For gardeners drawn to rugged high-altitude flora, the puna is the native home of the dramatic Puya raimondii, prized for producing one of the tallest flower spikes in the plant world.

The Central Andean wet puna stretches across the high Andes of Peru and eastern Bolivia, blanketing plateaus, glacial valleys, and lake basins generally above 3,500 metres in elevation. Its dominant cover is high-elevation montane grassland woven from bunchgrass genera such as Festuca, Calamagrostis, Stipa, Agrostis, and Paspalum, interspersed with gnarled Polylepis woodlands, the giant rosette bromeliad Puya raimondii, and waterlogged cushion-plant bogs (bofedales) of species like Distichia muscoides. The climate is cold and seasonally wet, with nightly freezes year-round in the upper zones and a rainy season that lengthens from roughly two months in the south to about eight months in the north. All four South American camelids occur here (vicuna, llama, guanaco, and alpaca) alongside puma and Andean fox, and the ecoregion harbors many endemic birds, including the critically endangered royal cinclodes, which depends on the dwindling Polylepis forests now threatened by grazing, burning, and mining. For high, cold gardens the puna offers hardy native ornamentals, from the dramatic Puya to cool-season tussock grasses such as Festuca, Calamagrostis, and Stipa.