montane

comparative more montane · superlative most montane

1. biologyOf, inhabiting, or growing in mountain areas; specifically, the cool, moist upland slopes below the timberline.First known use mid 19th c.

   I[ndri] indri is a forest species, found in humid montane rain forest [...]. It has been observed as high as 1,300 m elevation [...].

   1983, Jaclyn H. Wolfheim, “Indriidae: Avahi, Indris, and Sifakas”, in Primates of the World: Distribution, Abundance, and Conservation, Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, →ISBN, page 121

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   This plant evidently occupies, like V. sabulosa and V. Curtisii, an intermediate position between lutea and tricolor; and, as I have indicated already, it is a montane, not an agrestal plant. Jordan compares it to V. vivariensis, which is also a montane plant, between V. tricolor and V. lutea.

   1863 January, J[ohn] G[ilbert] Baker, “On Some of the British Pansies, Agrestal and Montane”, in [Berthold Carl Seemann], editor, The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, volume I, London: Robert Hardwicke, […], →OCLC, page 12

   [T]he upper part of these peaks is very bare and monotonous, and almost destitute of damp precipice; and I know of only seven Montane species that grow there above 650 yards.

   1871 January 1, J[ohn] G[ilbert] Baker, “On the Dispersion of Montane Plants over Hills of the North of England”, in Berthold [Carl] Seemann, J. G. Baker, H[enry] Trimen, editors, The Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, volume IX, London: Taylor and Co., […], →OCLC, page 261

   With a like lower limit of level there are found on hills numerous Sub-alpine or Montane plants, which do not grow in the North. We must therefore divide the Northern zone also into three parts—1, Northern (restricted); 2, Northern-montane; and 3, Montane only.

   1875 March 4, Thomas Comber, “Geographical Statistics of the Extra-British European Flora”, in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, volume III (Third Series), Liverpool, Lancashire: Adam Holden, […], →OCLC, page 15

   The montane region in its lower belts has, at the equator, a still tropical although not equatorial character, but near the two tropics it has from the first a temperate character. The difference between the equatorial rain-forest of the basal region on the one hand, and the tropical forest of the lower montane region on the other, is confined to the systematic composition. In temperate montane formations, on the contrary, the lower temperature is reflected in purely oecological characteristics in the plant-life and impresses upon the formations the stamp of those of higher latitudes.

   1903, A[ndreas] F[ranz] W[ilhelm] Schimper, “Mountain Regions in the Tropics”, in William R. Fisher, transl., edited by Percy Groom and Isaac Bayley Balfour, Plant-geography upon a Physiological Basis … The Authorized English Translation, Oxford, Oxfordshire: At the Clarendon Press, →OCLC, section I (General Considerations), page 721

   The temperatures are extremely constant and low as compared with those in the lowlands, although very rarely so low as to make frost possible, and the rainfall is abundant at all seasons. The Blue Mountain Region is, therefore, a tropical montane region, in the terms of [Andreas Franz Wilhelm] Schimper, lying above the hot lowlands and not attaining to a sufficient altitude for alpine influences to come into full play.

   1914, Forrest Shreve, “The Physical Features of the Rain-forest Region”, in A Montane Rain-forest: A Contribution to the Physiological Plant Geography of Jamaica (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication; no. 199), Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, →OCLC, page 8

   Synonyms: alpine · Antonyms: nonalpine, low-lying, coastal

plural montanes

1. biologyAn animal or a plant of a montane habitat.

   The wintergreens, and northern montanes such as Linnaea have their stronghold in these pinewoods and some of their rarity may be due to the reduction in the extent of the forest.

   2005, Peter Taylor, “Restoring Ecological Processes: Regeneration of the Core Vegetation”, in Beyond Conservation: A Wildland Strategy, London; Sterling, Va.: Earthscan, →ISBN, page 84

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   The true Montanes comprise those species, of unmistakably Alpine, Scottish, or Highland type, which not merely with us but elsewhere throughout Britain are characteristic of high latitudes and altitudes—of mountain regions only.

   1888, Frederic Arnold Lees, “Climatology”, in The Flora of West Yorkshire: With a Sketch of the Climatology and Lithology in Connection therewith (Botanical Series of the Transactions of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union; II), London: Lovell Reeve & Co., […], →OCLC, page 53