Plants & Animals

Closely linked with geographical location, landforms and climate, is the world of plants and animals specific to the Romanian territory. Largely influenced by its climate, Romania’s vegetation has a variety of species, characteristic to Western and Central Europe, as well as those in the northern, southern or eastern parts.

In Romania’s territory there are two distinguished areas: the forest area (the Central-European type, beech and fir are the main features) and Eastern Europe’s steppe area. The South of the country is host to many Mediterranean plants (Turkish hazel, downy oak, lilac, grape vine, etc.). You will notice that there are three important European borders of vegetation in Romania’s territory, as follows:

-the eastern limit of the beech specific to Western Europe;

-the western limit of the steppe specific to Eastern Europe;

-the north limit of grape vines specific to the South of Europe.

The beautiful mountain areas ranging from 0 to 2544 meters are home to unique alpine plants that thrive in the colder and harsh climate of the highest altitudes. We also have to mention some of the most interesting endemics: garofiţa Pietrei Craiului (Dianthus callizonus) a species of pink clove, the common lilac, the Romanian peony (Paeonia peregrina var. romanica) and also some ancient species preserved in special conditions (national parks, botanical and floristic reservations), like the edelweiss flower, snake’s Head fritillaria, (Fritillaria meleagris) and many more.

Romania’s fauna comes from the same big continental regions: Central Europe, with large forest animals; Eastern Europe, with its specific steppe rodents (gopher, hamster, field mouse, hare, ferret) and Southern Europe, with fewer representatives (horned viper, scorpion, tortoise, etc). We must emphasize the importance of the cynegetic fauna (black goat, wolf, carpathian stag, brown bear, mountain rooster, wild boar, deer, pheasant, rabbit, quail and grey partridge) which has some of the highest numbers in Europe.

The richness of Romania’s fauna also includes the aquatic fauna found in  the Black Sea (dolphins, sturgeons, turbots, mackerels, anchovies, black gobies), in the rivers and in the Danube, its ponds and its lakes   (trout, chub, barbel, crucian, carp, zander, pike, tench, bream), but also in the variety of the avifauna (duck and wild goose, swan, heron, egret, stork, pelican, cuckoo, pheasant, aquila, eagle etc.).