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Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

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Bolivian montane dry forests

Biome

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

Biogeographic realm

Neotropic

Dry montane valley and folded rock formations in Torotoro National Park, Bolivia.

Region photo - Gaumut / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0; attribution required.

Bolivian montane dry forests

The Bolivian montane dry forests occupy the eastern flank of the Andes in south-central Bolivia, barely reaching into northwest Argentina, where they form a transitional band between the moister Yungas and high puna grasslands above and the lowland Chaco scrub below. Across rugged terrain of cliffs, steep hillsides, and river valleys, the vegetation is a xeric mosaic of dry slopes studded with scattered shrubs and columnar cacti, seasonal dry forest, and gallery forest along watercourses, with characteristic woody plants including Vachellia caven, hopseed bush (Dodonaea viscosa), Prosopis, and quebracho hardwoods such as Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco and Schinopsis. The climate is strongly seasonal and semi-arid, pairing a pronounced dry winter with summer rains. The World Wildlife Fund rates the ecoregion Critical/Endangered, as only about six percent of its original habitat remains amid fragmentation from urban sprawl, agriculture, overhunting, and fuelwood cutting; it nonetheless shelters numerous endemic birds, among them the Bolivian blackbird, Cochabamba mountain finch, and the endangered red-fronted macaw, with the torrent duck as a flagship species. For gardeners in dry, mild-winter climates, several of its natives, such as the ornamental hopseed bush and the fragrant-flowered Vachellia caven, are familiar landscape plants.

RESOLVE 523

Neotropic

28,190 sq mi

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

Landscape type

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

Plant region

Neotropic

Region footprint

28,190 sq mi

Habitat pressure

Nature Imperiled (Dinerstein NNH 4)

Source & care

Plants that can handle this region

A climate-fit shortlist from Plotwright's catalog. Start with the reliable fits, then use each plant page to check light, water, soil, mature size, and local availability.

Showing 554 of 554 climate-fit plants for this region.

Reliable climate fits

Good bets for now and later

554 plants

These plants fit the region today and stay within range under the mid-century projection. Start here when you want choices with the least climate regret.

Yucca filamentosa

Adam's needle

A virtually stemless, broadleaf-evergreen native of central and eastern North America: a basal rosette of rigid, sword-shaped, spine-tipped leaves up to 30 inches long, fringed along the margins with the curly white threads that give the species its name. In early summer a flowering stalk shoots from the center to 5 to 8 feet, carrying nodding, bell-shaped, creamy-white flowers. Tough enough for poor sandy soil, heat, drought, and salt spray, it earns its keep as architectural structure in dry and seaside gardens.

Shrub

Full sun / Part shade

A tall, summer-growing cormous perennial from across sub-Saharan Africa, grown for arching spikes of large, hooded, orange-to-red-and-yellow flowers in summer over fans of sword-shaped leaves. This is the widespread wild African gladiolus and a key ancestor of the big garden gladioli. Unlike the winter-growing Cape bulbs, it is a SUMMER-GROWING corm: plant in spring, grow and flower through summer, then it dies back to a dormant corm for winter. It wants full sun, well-drained soil, and summer moisture, and is one of the hardier species gladioli - surviving to about USDA zone 7 with a deep winter mulch or by lifting the corms in cold-winter areas. The corms are toxic and irritant if eaten and have been used in traditional medicine, never as food. In the wild the hooded flowers are pollinated by sunbirds and long-tongued insects.

A bold, clump-forming evergreen perennial from South Africa, grown for big rounded umbels of trumpet-shaped blue (or white) flowers held on tall bare stalks above arching, strap-shaped leaves in mid-to-late summer. It is widely sold as "lily of the Nile," but that is a misnomer - the plant is South African (the Cape provinces and KwaZulu-Natal), not from the Nile. Spectacular and easy in warm climates, this evergreen Agapanthus is frost-tender, so in cold-winter areas it is grown in a container and overwintered under cover. The RHS has given several Agapanthus praecox forms its Award of Garden Merit and rates this evergreen species half-hardy (H3 - needs winter protection).

Perennial

Full sun / Part shade

A tall, bold warm-season annual from Mexico and Guatemala (the "African" name is a misnomer of its European garden history) grown for large, fully double, pompon-like flowerheads in saturated yellow, gold, and orange over strongly aromatic, finely divided foliage. Plants reach 1 to 4 feet and bloom from early summer to frost in full sun. The petals are edible and used as a culinary garnish and natural dye, and the flowers are the iconic "flor de muerto" of Mexican Day of the Dead. Despite the wide listed zone range it is frost-tender and grown for a single warm season.

Annual

Full sun / Part shade

A native eastern + central North American thicket-forming shrub producing arching thorny canes + clusters of large sweet black berries in mid-to-late summer. Among the most important wildlife fruit producers in eastern forests - birds, mammals, + insects all depend on the fruit. Like raspberry, biennial-caned (primocane year 1, fruits in year 2 as floricane, then dies back). Spreads via root suckers + tip-rooting cane tips; manage with annual pruning.

Pachysandra procumbens

Allegheny spurge

A native Southeastern North American semi-evergreen woodland groundcover (Pachysandra procumbens), prized for its blue-green to bronze mottled leaves and fragrant white-to-pinkish bottlebrush flower spikes that open at ground level in late winter to early spring. Unlike the widely planted invasive Asian Pachysandra terminalis, this native spreads slowly by rhizomes into well-behaved clumping colonies, making it a low, restrained groundcover for shaded native plantings.

Hippeastrum x hybridum

Amaryllis

Hippeastrum x hybridum is a complex garden hybrid derived from six or more wild Hippeastrum species native to tropical and subtropical South America, developed through intensive breeding since the late 18th century and now the dominant "amaryllis" sold worldwide as a holiday bulb. It produces spectacular trumpet-shaped flowers - 5 to 8 inches across - on stout leafless scapes in red, pink, white, orange, salmon, or bicolour, making it one of the most dramatic winter-flowering houseplants available. The honest catch is toxicity: the entire plant, especially the bulb, contains lycorine and related alkaloids at concentrations that cause vomiting, salivation, tremors, and hypotension in pets and children, so it must be placed out of reach and handled with care.

Perennial

Part sun / Part shade

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50 to 80 feet with an ovate-rounded crown and large, asymmetric heart-shaped leaves. In June it carries pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers on pendulous cymes - each cluster hung from a distinctive strap-like leafy bract - that ripen into pea-sized nutlets. The fragrant June bloom is a premier nectar source: Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as attracting bees and butterflies, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as having special value to both native and honey bees.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is a loose, open, arching deciduous shrub of the southeastern and south-central United States, grown almost entirely for one spectacular autumn trick. Through summer it is a quiet green background plant, carrying small clusters of pink-to-lilac flowers tucked into the leaf axils. Then, from late summer into fall, those clusters ripen into tight whorls of vivid magenta-purple berries that wrap right around the stems at every leaf joint, so the arching branches look strung with beads. Songbirds strip them through fall and early winter. It is an easy, fast-growing, forgiving native that asks for little: full sun to part shade, ordinary well-drained soil, and room to arch. Site it where the fall berry show can be seen, because in leaf and flower it is plain, and in fruit it is one of the most distinctive shrubs you can grow.

Shrub

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

Once the dominant canopy hardwood of the eastern United States forest - an estimated four billion trees, prized for fast growth, rot-resistant timber, and an enormous annual crop of sweet edible nuts that fed people, livestock, and wildlife alike. In the early 1900s an introduced Asian fungus, chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), swept through and functionally destroyed it: by the 1950s the species was effectively extinct as a mature forest tree. Surviving root systems still send up sprouts from old stumps, but the blight almost always girdles and kills them before they can grow large enough to flower and reproduce. The honest reality for a gardener is that you cannot reliably grow a mature wild-type American chestnut today. The realistic paths are blight-resistant backcross hybrids from The American Chestnut Foundation or transgenic blight-tolerant lines still being deployed - not a pure wild seedling, which the blight will almost certainly kill.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

Shrub

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

The American elm is the great vase-shaped shade tree that once arched over Main Streets and town commons across eastern North America - a fast, extremely cold-hardy deciduous tree of 60 to 80 feet whose upright trunk divides into a fountain of high, spreading limbs that meet overhead to form a living cathedral ceiling. That iconic form, and the species' tolerance of wet soil and tough urban conditions, made it the default American street tree for a century. Then Dutch elm disease (DED) - an introduced fungal disease carried by elm bark beetles - swept through in the 20th century and killed the vast majority of mature street and shade elms across the continent. The honest reality for a gardener today is blunt: do not plant the unselected wild species expecting it to survive. If you want the American-elm form, plant a DED-tolerant cultivar bred and selected for resistance - 'Princeton', 'Valley Forge', 'New Harmony', or 'Jefferson' - and say so plainly. Where it does grow, it is fast, hardy to USDA zone 3, and remarkably forgiving of wet ground and city stress.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

American germander, also called wood sage, is a widespread North American native perennial in the mint family that runs steadily underground on creeping rhizomes. From early to midsummer it sends up erect, softly hairy stems topped with one-sided spikes of pale pink-to-lavender flowers, each with the distinctive deeply lobed lower lip that gives the germanders their look and makes a generous landing platform for bees. It is a plant of moist open ground - wet meadows, streambanks, ditches, and the edges of thickets - across most of the contiguous United States into southern Canada, which tells you exactly what it wants: sun and a soil that does not dry out. The honest caveat is its vigor: those same rhizomes that fill a bank or a rain garden so readily will also colonize a tidy perennial border and crowd politer neighbors. Site it where it can run, or give it a root barrier, and it rewards you with a long, dependable bee-friendly bloom rather than a maintenance fight.

Perennial

Full sun / Part shade

A rounded, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub native across eastern and central North America, grown for its edible nuts and its season-opening catkins. Showy 2-3 inch yellowish-brown male catkins dangle from bare branches in early spring before the ovate, double-toothed leaves emerge; small egg-shaped edible nuts ripen inside leafy husks by mid- to late summer. Easygoing in average soil and tolerant of clay and black walnut, it suckers into thickets that screen and shelter wildlife.

Shrub

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

The only native U.S. holly with both spiny green leaves and bright red berries - an upright, pyramidal, broadleaf evergreen tree that slowly matures to 15 to 30 feet in cultivation (to 50 feet in the wild). Thick, leathery, deep green leaves bear spiny marginal teeth, and pollinated female trees carry showy red-to-orange drupes that ripen in fall and persist through winter as bird food. This is the classic "Christmas holly" of wreaths and decorations.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

A small-to-medium understory tree of dry, rocky eastern-North-American woods, named for its drooping clusters of papery, sac-like seed pods that resemble the fruit of hops. The birch-like, sharply-serrated leaves turn an undistinguished yellow in fall, and reddish-brown male catkins persist on the bare branches through winter. Also called ironwood for its extremely hard, dense wood; tough, low-maintenance, and drought-tolerant once established.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

A tough, medium-sized native tree of the eastern and midwestern United States, grown as much for its showy edible orange fruit as for its distinctive thick, dark gray bark broken into rectangular blocks. Small urn-shaped white-to-greenish-yellow flowers open in May and June, and the sweet fruit ripens after frost. Largely dioecious - a female tree needs a male pollinizer nearby to set fruit - and notably drought- and walnut-tolerant once established.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

A small native deciduous tree (or thicket-forming, suckering shrub) of eastern and central North America, grown for clouds of fragrant white 5-petaled flowers that open in March before the leaves and for the edible red plums that follow in early summer. It forms a broad, spreading crown with attractive dark reddish-brown twigs that sometimes carry thorny lateral branchlets. A documented larval host for swallowtails and other butterflies, with flowers of special value to native, bumble, and honey bees.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

American red raspberry

A native bramble (cane) producing red aromatic edible fruit in summer or fall (depending on summer-bearing vs everbearing cultivar). Self-pollinating; spreads vigorously by root suckers + tip-rooting canes. NC State documents extensive Lepidoptera + small mammal + bird wildlife value alongside the edible fruit role. Site where the spreading habit is welcome - naturalized colonies form in sun-exposed open ground.

Liquidambar styraciflua

American sweetgum

A native canopy tree of eastern North American forests with iconic star-shaped 5-lobed leaves displaying outstanding red-purple-orange fall color, distinctive corky wing-bark on twigs, and spiky round seed pods that famously litter lawns ("gumballs"). The seed pods are the design-defining drawback - Liquidambar is rarely planted in formal landscapes for this reason. Choose seedless cultivars ('Rotundiloba', 'Slender Silhouette') for residential planting.

Platanus occidentalis

American sycamore

A massive native deciduous canopy tree of eastern North American floodplain forests producing distinctive mottled white-tan-gray exfoliating bark (the design-defining trait - sycamore bark looks like military camouflage), large palmate maple-like leaves, and persistent spherical seed balls. Among the largest deciduous trees in eastern North America - old-growth specimens exceed 150 feet tall + 10 feet trunk diameter. Site only where massive scale is acceptable.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

Amur maple (Acer ginnala, accepted by Kew's Plants of the World Online as Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala) is a small, fast-growing deciduous tree or large multi-stemmed shrub from northeastern Asia - the Russian Far East, northeastern China, and Korea. At 15 to 20 feet it fits where a full-size maple cannot, and it earns that place with three seasons of interest: fragrant greenish-yellow flowers in spring, which is an unusual scent for a maple and an early nectar source for bees; small glossy three-lobed leaves through summer; and reliable, often brilliant red-to-orange fall color that arrives early. It is also one of the hardiest maples, tolerant of cold, wind, dry soil, and a wide range of pH. The honest catch, and it is a serious one for North American gardeners, is that it self-sows prolifically and has escaped cultivation to become invasive across parts of the US Midwest and Northeast, where its shade-tolerant seedlings crowd native shrubs and understory trees in open woods, savannas, and prairies. Several states list it as invasive or a noxious weed. Check your local invasive-species list before planting, and be prepared to remove seedlings if you do.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

Dierama pulcherrimum, angel's fishing rod, is an arching, more-or-less evergreen cormous perennial in the iris family (Iridaceae), endemic to the open summer-rainfall grasslands of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It forms grassy tufts of long, narrow leaves from which tall, wiry, arching flower stems rise to about 4.9 feet (occasionally to 5.9 feet), each hung with pendulous, bell-shaped rosy-pink to purple flowers in summer - the namesake "fishing rod" silhouette over a pond or in a gravel garden. It is the load-bearing caution to note that this is only a borderline-hardy plant: RHS rates it H4 (hardy to roughly 14 to 23°F / USDA ~8b-9), so in colder zones it needs a sheltered, sunny, sharply drained spot, a winter mulch, or container/glasshouse protection, and it resents disturbance once established. It is not recorded as toxic - though it is grown purely as an ornamental and is not a food plant, so treat it as inedible. It is well-behaved (Least Concern in the wild, no recorded weediness) and suits borders, pond margins, and containers in mild-temperate gardens.

An upright, clump-forming perennial of the mint family native to the upper Midwest, Great Plains, and into central Canada, named for its anise-scented foliage. From June through September it carries dense terminal spikes of lavender-to-purple two-lipped flowers above square stems and opposite, toothed leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a nectar source with special value to native bees, bumble bees, and honey bees, and it also draws butterflies and hummingbirds.

Perennial

Full sun / Part shade

Planting collections

Finished planting recipes where every member can handle this region's climate range. The fit badge uses the collection's most sensitive plant, so a resilient collection is a safer starting point than any single standout.

Annabelle hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle') showing large white ball-shaped flower clusters on a rounded deciduous shrub.

Coral bells (Heuchera 'Marmalade') showing a low mound of ruffled coppery-orange foliage characteristic of the Heuchera villosa-derived hybrids.

Climate-resilient · 2 plants

Bright shade foundation

A part-shade planting with shrub structure and low foliage contrast.

Annabelle hydrangea

Coral bells

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) mature clump in the green growing season, its upright vase-shaped habit topped by the airy, diffuse open panicles diagnostic of the species.

Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) clumps in a garden bed, showing the species' upright, fine-textured blue-green vase-shaped growing-season habit.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) mature clump in flower, showing its stout upright reddish stems, broad opposite leaves, and pink-mauve flower umbels with young green pods.

A full clump of black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm') in a garden bed, showing the dense mounded foliage base topped with golden, dark-centered daisies on branching stems.

Climate-resilient · 8 plants

Climate-resilient natives for warming zones (eastern NA)

A pollinator-supporting palette of eastern North American natives with broad hardiness ranges and wide native distributions. Built for gardeners who want a planting that can handle warming zones without giving up wildlife value.

Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) showing dense needle-like aromatic foliage on woody branches.

Garden sage (Salvia officinalis) showing gray-green velvety foliage + spike of lavender summer flowers.

Oregano (Origanum vulgare) showing spreading mat of small aromatic leaves + pink-white flower clusters.

Climate-resilient · 6 plants

Mediterranean drought-tolerant edible

A low-water edible palette of culinary herbs + a hardy grape for hot dry sunny sites. Mediterranean-origin plants thrive on neglect; their primary failure mode is overwatering, not underwatering.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) in bloom, showing pinkish-purple ray petals around a brown-domed central cone on an erect stem.

Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) clump in an open meadow, its several upright square stems each topped by a ragged lavender flower head over toothed mint-family foliage.

Climate-resilient · 9 plants

Native pollinator border (eastern US)

A continuous-bloom native pollinator strip for eastern North America. Covers spring through frost with host + nectar plants spanning monarchs, native bees, hummingbirds, and specialist Lepidoptera. Little bluestem provides the matrix grass + Hesperiidae host.

Woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata) showing five-petaled pale lavender-blue flowers on slender erect stems above a low spreading mat of foliage.

Wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) whole plant in rocky-ledge habitat, the airy blue-green compound foliage hung with nodding red-and-yellow spurred flowers.

Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) showing characteristic frothy white spring flower spikes above heart-shaped foliage.

Climate-resilient · 6 plants

Part-shade woodland edge

A part-shade / bright-shade planting for morning sun or dappled light - eastern North American woodland-edge natives with spring bloom, season-long foliage, and a fern + shrub structure.

Climate-resilient · 4 plants

Sunny pollinator border

A durable sunny border with summer bloom, seedheads, and upright winter texture.

Starter kits for this region

Generated from catalog plants that already pass this region's climate fit gate, with native matches sorted first when the catalog has enough coverage.

Sunny pollinator border

A sunny, wildlife-forward planting assembled from plants that pass this region fit gate.

Native fit: 0/6

Climate resilient: 6/6

Wildlife links: 17

Host/specialist links: 4

Forage/pollination links: 20

Shelter links: 0

Adam's needle - Climate-resilient African gladiolus - Climate-resilient African lily - Climate-resilient African marigold - Climate-resilient Allegheny blackberry - Climate-resilient American basswood - Climate-resilient

Shade-edge planting

A softer edge kit for woodland margins, porches, and mixed-light garden edges.

Native fit: 0/6

Climate resilient: 6/6

Wildlife links: 12

Host/specialist links: 2

Forage/pollination links: 15

Shelter links: 0

Adam's needle - Climate-resilient African lily - Climate-resilient African marigold - Climate-resilient Allegheny blackberry - Climate-resilient Allegheny spurge - Climate-resilient Amaryllis - Climate-resilient

Resilient shrub layer

A woody structure layer led by plants that fit both current and projected regional conditions.

Native fit: 0/6

Climate resilient: 6/6

Wildlife links: 21

Host/specialist links: 4

Forage/pollination links: 26

Shelter links: 3

Adam's needle - Climate-resilient Allegheny blackberry - Climate-resilient American basswood - Climate-resilient American beautyberry - Climate-resilient American chestnut - Climate-resilient American elderberry - Climate-resilient

Similar planting regions

Browse other regions in the same biome. Their plant lists can suggest species and combinations worth comparing.

Tropical forest canopy near Villavicencio, Meta, Colombia.

RESOLVE 520 - Neotropic

Apure-Villavicencio dry forests

The Apure-Villavicencio dry forests stretch along the eastern foot of the Andes' eastern cordillera, spanning the Venezuelan states of Portuguesa, Barinas and Apure and the Colombian departments of Arauca, Casanare and Meta. This is a transitional ecoregion, a patchwork of premontane, gallery and deciduous dry forest grading into savanna where the Andean montane forests give way to the lowland Llanos grasslands. Characteristic woody plants include mesquite (Prosopis juliflora), palo verde (Cercidium praecox), kapok (Ceiba pentandra), yellow mombin (Spondias mombin), and palms such as the moriche (Mauritia flexuosa) and macaúba (Acrocomia aculeata). Its climate is equatorial with a pronounced dry winter (Köppen Aw), with temperatures ranging from about 19 to 33 degrees Celsius. The forests have been severely degraded by deforestation, farming and ranching, leaving poorly protected remnants that the World Wildlife Fund rates as Vulnerable, yet they still shelter the giant anteater, Geoffroy's spider monkey, and the flagship Colombian four-eyed frog. Gardeners may recognize several natives here as ornamentals, including the stately kapok tree and the moriche and macaúba palms.

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

RESOLVE 521 - Neotropic

Bajío dry forests

The Bajío dry forests cover the southwestern Mexican Plateau in west-central Mexico, spanning the states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Michoacán across the Lerma River basin and the lake country around Chapala, Cuitzeo, and Pátzcuaro. Set in valleys between roughly 1,000 and 2,000 meters on shallow, rocky, well-drained volcanic and limestone soils, the region was historically dry deciduous forest whose characteristic trees included copal, pochote, palo amarillo, and mauto, with thorn-scrub communities of mesquite and huamúchil. The climate is tropical subhumid, with annual rainfall around 500 to 930 millimeters and a pronounced dry season that can last up to eight months. This is one of Mexico's most developed and densely populated landscapes, and centuries of agriculture and grazing have reduced the forest to small pockets now dominated by thorn scrub and subtropical matorral, leaving the ecoregion classed as critical or endangered with only about 7.5 percent in protected areas. Gardeners working in comparably dry, seasonal climates may recognize natives of this region in drought-adapted, deciduous trees such as mesquite and copal.

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

RESOLVE 522 - Neotropic

Balsas dry forests

The Balsas dry forests occupy the basin of the Balsas River in western and central Mexico, spreading across the states of Michoacan, Guerrero, Morelos, Mexico, Puebla, and Oaxaca. This tropical dry broadleaf ecoregion is a deciduous and thorn forest dominated by Bursera trees, alongside the legume Haematoxylum brasiletto and abundant columnar cacti such as Pachycereus and Cephalocereus. The climate is tropical and subhumid, with seasonal rainfall and a severe dry season that can last up to eight months. The forests are a renowned center of plant endemism and speciation, especially for Bursera, with roughly half of the region's Bursera species found nowhere else, and they shelter the near-endemic Balsas screech-owl, though only about a tenth of the ecoregion lies within protected areas. For drought-tolerant or xeric plantings, the native Bursera (the source of copal incense) and the dyewood Haematoxylum brasiletto are ornamental genera that evolved here.

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

RESOLVE 524 - Neotropic

Brazilian Atlantic dry forests

The Brazilian Atlantic dry forests form a tropical dry forest ecoregion of eastern Brazil, stretching across northern Minas Gerais, Bahia, and Piauí along the São Francisco River depression, where they sit between the Cerrado savannas of central Brazil and the Caatinga dry shrublands of the northeast. The vegetation is deciduous to semi-deciduous forest reaching roughly 25 to 30 meters tall, characterized by trees such as the bottle-trunked barriguda (Cavanillesia arborea), Brazilian cedarwood, and Tabebuia species. The climate is tropical with a pronounced dry season of about five months and annual rainfall of 850 to 1,000 mm, on eutrophic soils derived from Bambuí limestone. Conservation is a serious concern: around 70 percent of the native forest has been cleared for agriculture and charcoal production tied to Brazil's steel and pig-iron industries, and the region is home to the critically endangered Barbara Brown's titi as well as threatened birds like the hyacinth macaw. For gardeners, the native Tabebuia trumpet trees are familiar ornamental flowering trees rooted in this drought-adapted flora.

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

RESOLVE 525 - Neotropic

Caatinga

The Caatinga is a semi-arid ecoregion covering the drier interior of northeastern Brazil, stretching across states including Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia, and parts of Minas Gerais, and it ranks as the largest dry forest region in South America. Its vegetation is a heterogeneous xeric shrubland and thorn forest of small, drought-deciduous thorny trees, with a ground layer rich in cacti and succulents such as the mandacaru (Cereus jamacaru) and prickly pears (Opuntia), alongside carnaúba palms and fruit-bearing trees like umbú. The climate is hot and dry, with six to eleven dry months a year and average annual rainfall ranging from about 250 to 1,000 millimeters. Despite this aridity, the Caatinga harbors a unique biota with many endemic species and is the home of its flagship bird, the Spix's macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii), though less than seven percent of the ecoregion is currently protected. For gardeners in hot, dry climates, its native cacti such as Opuntia and Cereus are familiar ornamental and edible-fruit genera.

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

RESOLVE 526 - Neotropic

Cauca Valley dry forests

The Cauca Valley dry forests form a long, narrow strip of tropical dry forest in Colombia, running north to south along the Cauca River between the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Central in the northern Andes. The two ranges cast a rain shadow that leaves this inter-Andean valley markedly drier than the surrounding montane forests, supporting a mosaic of open woodland, deciduous and evergreen dry forest, riparian forest, arid scrub, and wetlands across low elevations. Where forest has regenerated, secondary vegetation is dominated by genera such as Cecropia, Cestrum, Inga, Croton, Isertia, Trema, and Vismia. The ecoregion harbors several endemic or near-endemic birds, including the white-chested swift (Cypseloides lemosi), grayish piculet (Picumnus granadensis), and apical flycatcher (Myiarchus apicalis). It is considered critically endangered, as most of its forest has been cleared for agriculture, with only small protected fragments remaining at the Laguna de Sonso (Sonso Lagoon) reserve.

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

Where this ecoregion reaches

The countries, US states, and Canadian provinces this ecoregion touches, from a spatial join of its RESOLVE polygon against Natural Earth boundaries.

Countries

Bolivia

Educator packet

Region packet

Bolivian montane dry forests educator packet

Realm

Neotropic

Dominant biome

Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests

Approximate area

28,190 square miles

States / provinces

Not recorded

Climate descriptor

Not recorded

Classroom prompts

- Which climate and biome facts explain why this region supports its characteristic plants?

- How do native-plant and wildlife-support claims differ from a species-presence claim?

- Which source-backed facts would you cite before using this region in a classroom map activity?

Use the Sources & citations section below for page citation styles and region source links.

Sources & citations

Cite this page

For lesson plans, articles, or regional planting notes that use this Plotwright page. To cite the underlying ecoregion framework or a specific editorial profile, use the source cards below.

Plotwright. (n.d.). Bolivian montane dry forests (Bolivian montane dry forests). Retrieved 2026, August 20, from https://plotwright.com/regions/resolve-523

Sources for this region

This page cites Plotwright first for the compiled view, then lists the upstream framework, climate, and editorial source pages so readers can cite the original material directly.

RESOLVE 2017 Terrestrial Ecoregions (Dinerstein et al.)

Primary ecoregion framework

One Earth

Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation

Open source

Source guide