Winters are long, harsh, and dry with long-lasting snow cover. Plants include conifers, lichens, and mosses. There are other temperate zone coniferous forests with warmer climates. Typically the canopy is very will-developed so there is very little stratification. The few other plants underneath consist of ferns, mosses, and some herbaceous plants.
Many areas are well-stratified with a number of layers of vegetation under the canopy.
If trees are of uneven ages and there are more holes in the canopy, there is more stratification. Tropical rainforest is equatorial, with high humidity and heavy rainfall most of the year. Trees include a mixture of small numbers of many species of trees with none dominant. Leaf litter decays rapidly, the soil is usually bare clay, and most nutrients are in the trees, not the soil. Jungle is tangled vegetation of second-growth forest when the primary rainforest has been destroyed, often on abandoned farmland.