page_title: Boreal Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Boreal Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: Heide bei Niederhaverbeck, Wacholder (Juniperus communis)
context_page_description: The Boreal Kingdom or Holarctic Kingdom is a floristic kingdom identified by botanist Ronald Good, which includes the temperate to Arctic portions of North America and Eurasia. Its flora is inherited from the ancient supercontinent of Laurasia. However, parts of the floristic kingdom were glaciated during the Pleistocene and as a consequence have a very young flora. Cenozoic relicts found refuge in the southern and mountainous parts of the kingdom, especially in the Eastern Asiatic Region and southern North American Atlantic Region.
  Good noted that many plant species of temperate North America and Eurasia were very closely related, despite their separation by the Atlantic Ocean and the Bering Strait.
  Millions of years ago, before the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, North America and Eurasia were joined as a single continent, Laurasia. After the opening of the Atlantic, the continents were connected to one another periodically via land bridges linking Alaska and Siberia.
context_section_description: The Boreal Kingdom or Holarctic Kingdom (Holarctis) is a floristic kingdom identified by botanist Ronald Good (and later by Armen Takhtajan), which includes the temperate to Arctic portions of North America and Eurasia. Its flora is inherited from the ancient supercontinent of Laurasia. However, parts of the floristic kingdom (and most of its Circumboreal Region) were glaciated during the Pleistocene and as a consequence have a very young flora. Cenozoic relicts found refuge in the southern and mountainous parts of the kingdom, especially in the Eastern Asiatic Region and southern North American Atlantic Region.
  Good noted that many plant species of temperate North America and Eurasia were very closely related, despite their separation by the Atlantic Ocean and the Bering Strait.
  Millions of years ago, before the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, North America and Eurasia were joined as a single continent, Laurasia. After the opening of the Atlantic, the continents were connected to one another periodically via land bridges linking Alaska and Siberia. Until a few million years ago, the global climate was warmer than at present, especially at higher latitudes, and many temperate climate species were distributed across North America and Eurasia via Alaska and Siberia. The sharply cooler climate of the past few million years eliminated a temperate-zone connection between North America and Eurasia, but common Laurasian origins and a long history of temperate-climate land bridges account for the botanical similarities between the temperate floras on the two continents.
  A floristic kingdom is the botanical analogue to an biogeographic realm, which takes into account the distribution of animal as well as plant species. Many biogeographers distinguish the Boreal Kingdom as comprising two realms, the Nearctic (North America) and Palearctic (North Africa and Eurasia). Others, based on the distribution of related  plant and animal families, include the Palearctic and Nearctic in a single Holarctic realm, which corresponds to Good's Boreal Kingdom.
caption: Juniperus communis on Lüneburg Heath in Germany
exif: {"Image Make": "EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY", "Image Model": "KODAK P850 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "230", "Image YResolution": "230", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "8180", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "1571", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:09:17 10:40:34", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:09:17 10:40:34", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "833/100", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "14/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Daylight", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "6", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1944", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "896", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "50", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "36", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}