Temperate Deciduous and Mixed Forests

Temperate deciduous forest is the characteristic biome of humid continental and humid subtropical climates with a sufficiently long, cool-to-cold winter to make dropping leaves each autumn an effective strategy for surviving both cold-induced desiccation and the mechanical stress of accumulated snow on unshed foliage. The biome occurs in three principal, geographically disjunct belts: eastern North America from the Great Lakes and New England south into the Appalachians and the Piedmont; Western and Central Europe from the British Isles and France through Germany and Poland; and East Asia across much of eastern China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. Each belt is dominated by broadly comparable genera — oaks (Quercus), maples (Acer), beeches (Fagus), and hickories or their ecological equivalents — despite the three regions having been separated by ocean and, in the case of North America and Europe, the widening North Atlantic, for tens of millions of years.