montane

English

WOTD – 11 December 2020

Etymology

The adjective is derived from Latin montānus (“of or pertaining to a mountain”) + English -ane (variant of -an (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives)). Montānus is derived from mōns (“mount, mountain”) (from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to stand out, to tower”)) + -ānus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’).

The noun is probably derived from the adjective.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmɒnteɪn/
Audio (RP) (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /mɑnˈteɪn/
Audio (GA) (file)
Rhymes: (General American) -eɪn
Hyphenation: mont‧ane

Adjective

montane (comparative more montane, superlative most montane)

(ecology) Of, inhabiting, or growing in mountain areas; specifically, the cool, moist upland slopes below the timberline.
- 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:
  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.
- 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:
  [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.
- 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:
  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.
- 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 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.
- 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:
  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.
- 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:
  I[ndri] indri is a forest species, found in humid montane rain forest [...]. It has been observed as high as 1,300 m elevation [...].
- 1999, Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, London: Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, →ISBN; paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper Perennial, 2000, →ISBN, page 27:
  The gorilla's ancestor had probably taken to the montane forests of a string of central African volcanoes, cutting itself off from the genes of other apes.
- 2000, M. Kappelle, M. E. Juárez, “Case Study: Mountain Forests, Biodiversity and People in Costa Rica”, in M. F. Price, N. Butt, editors, Forests in Sustainable Mountain Development: A State of Knowledge Report for 2000 (IUFRO Research Series; 5), Wallingford, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: CABI Publishing, →ISBN, page 46:
  The key to sustainable tropical montane cloud forest land management lies in actively involving local rural populations in decision-taking processes relating to research, training, development and conservation strategies and initiatives.
- 2014, Stephanie B. Jeffries, Thomas R. Wentworth, “Natural Community Overviews”, in Exploring Southern Appalachian Forests: An Ecological Guide to 30 Great Hikes in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia (A Southern Gateways Guide), Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, →ISBN, page 22:
  At lower elevations, montane oak forests typically grade into cove forests, oak forests, or montane pine forests and woodlands. At higher elevations and in more protected sites, northern hardwood forests replace the montane oak forests. Montane oak forests may also grade directly into spruce-fir forests on south-facing slopes.

Coordinate terms

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Related terms

Translations

of, inhabiting, or growing in mountain areas

Chinese:
Mandarin: 山區的／山区的 (shānqūde)
Japanese: 山地の (さんち, sanchino)
Spanish: montano

Noun

montane (plural montanes)

(ecology) An animal or a plant of a montane habitat.
- 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:
  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.
- 2005, Peter Taylor, “Restoring Ecological Processes: Regeneration of the Core Vegetation”, in Beyond Conservation: A Wildland Strategy, London, Sterling, Va.: Earthscan, →ISBN, page 84:
  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.