Vegetation and wildlife. USA

Flora of the United States The native flora of the United States includes about 17,000 species of vascular plants, plus tens of thousands of additional species of other plants and plant-like organisms such as algae, lichens and other fungi, and mosses. About 3,800 additional non-native species of vascular plants are recorded as established outside of cultivation in the U.S., as well as a much smaller number of non-native non-vascular plants and plant relatives. The United States possesses one of the most diverse temperate floras in the world, comparable only to that of China

Several biogeographic factors contribute to the richness and diversity of the U.S. flora. While most of the United States has a temperate climate, Alaska has vast arctic areas, the southern part of Florida is tropical, as well as Hawaii (including high mountains), and alpine summits are present on many western mountains, as well as a few in the Northeast. The U.S. coastline borders three oceans: The Atlantic (and Gulf of Mexico), the Arctic, and the Pacific. Finally, the U.S. shares long borders with Canada and Mexico, and is relatively close to the Bahamas, Cuba and other Caribbean islands, and easternmost Asia.

The native flora of the United States has provided the world with a large number of horticultural and agricultural plants, mostly ornamentals, such as flowering dogwood, redbud, mountain laurel, bald cypress, southern magnolia, and black locust, all now cultivated in temperate regions worldwide, but also various food plants such as blueberries, black raspberries, cranberries, maple syrup and sugar, and pecans, and Monterey pine and other timber trees.

Some of the native U.S. plants, such as Franklinia alatamaha, have demonstrably become extinct or extinct in the wild; others, such as Micranthemum micranthemoides, have not been seen in decades, but may still be extant. Thousands of other native U.S. vascular plants are considered rare, threatened, or endangered, either globally (rangewide) or within particular states

Fauna of the United States The fauna of the United States of America is all the animals living in the Continental United States and its surrounding seas and islands, the Hawaiian Archipelago, Alaska in the Arctic, and several island- territories in the Pacific and in the Caribbean. The U.S. has arguably the most diverse fauna in the world and has many distinctive indigenous species found nowhere else on Earth.

With most of the North American continent, the U.S. lies in the Nearctic faunistic realm, a region containing an assemblage of species similar to northern parts of Africa and Eurasia. An estimated 432 species of mammals characterize the fauna of the continental U.S.

More than 800 species of birds and there are more than 100,000 known species of insects.

There are 311 known reptiles, 295 amphibians and 1154 known fish species in the U.S. Known animals that exist in all of the lower 48 states include white-tailed deer, bobcat, raccoon, muskrat, striped skunk, barn owl, American mink, American beaver, North American river otter and red fox. The red-tailed hawk is one of the most widely distributed hawks not only in the U.S., but in the Americas.

Huge parts of the country with the most distinctive indigenous wildlife are protected as national parks. In 2013, the U.S. had more than 6770 national parks or protected areas, all together more than 1,006,619 sq. miles (2,607,131 km2). The first national park was Yellowstone National Park in the state of Wyoming, established in Yellowstone National Park is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the U.S. There are 67 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and the grizzly bear.

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