The higher slopes of the verdant Black Sea region are thick with beech, oak, maple, alder, Scots Pine, and Oriental Spruce, while the narrow coastal strip and lower slopes are used to grow tea, hazelnuts, flax, maize, cherries and plums. Steppe is characterised by the diversity of life which it sustains, especially in spring, when the rolling landscape is carpeted in a multicoloured profusion of delicate featured but hardy flowers, including daisies, crocuses, violets and poppies. This landscape has been the inspiration of carpet and kilim weavers for centuries. Much of Turkey's western and central steppe is used for the cultivation of cereals, sunflowers and sugar beet, as well as pasture land for large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. The further east one moves the more sparse and barren the landscape becomes, with alternating arid, semi-desert lowlands and towering mountain peaks.
Wetlands are extremely valuable ecosystems which are found in abundance in Turkey.
Although they do not have the diversity of the steppe, they make up for this in an organic productivity as high as tropical rain forests. Rushes and reed, buttercups, water mint, waterlilies and tamarisks are commonly seen plants while the waters teem with plankton, algae and water weeds. As a result of this rich food source, the wetlands are inhabited by large flocks of birds, who require hugh amounts of food relative to body weight in order to survive. Species found include flamingos, wild ducks and geese, teal, herons and tern, and numerous endangered species such as the Dalmatian pelican, pygmy cormorant and the slender billed curlew. The Southeast is similarily a haven for threatened species.