PLANTS

Plant life varies with land type and climate. By far the most abundant form is boreal, or northern, forest, which accounts for four fifths of the nation's forested area. Indeed, this band of tree growth, which covers the southern portion of the Canadian Shield and which stretches uninterrupted from the border with Alaska to the Atlantic coast, is second in size only to the boreal forests of Russia. Since deciduous trees, or those that shed their leaves, cannot survive in a climate where the average January temperature is below -0.4o F (-18o C), the boreal forest is made up almost entirely of coniferous, or evergreen, trees. These forests are the mainstay of Canada's pulp and paper and forest products industries.

South of the boreal forest in northwestern Ontario, and again from central Ontario to the Maritime, or Atlantic, Provinces, lies a belt of mixed coniferous and deciduous forest. In southern Ontario are small wooded areas that are the remains of what was the only completely deciduous forest in Canada

Northward from the boreal forests lies a transitional zone of scattered stunted coniferous forest and muskeg swamp. This subarctic region, called taiga, yields to the tundra, where it is too cold for trees of any kind to survive. This is the land of lichens and mosses, plants that, like those in warm deserts, must follow a cycle of a short period of growth, followed by a long period of dormancy. This is Canada's most fragile environment and one that has engaged the attention and energies of a number of groups concerned that commercial exploitation of the Arctic resources may cause serious and irreparable damage.