State guide

Tennessee Nature Guide

Tennessee stretches more than 400 miles from the Mississippi River bottomlands of the west to the 6,000-foot crest of the Great Smoky Mountains in the east, gathering an extraordinary range of country in between — the loess bluffs and cypress sloughs of the Coastal Plain, the cedar glades and rolling pastures of the Central Basin, the sandstone tablelands of the Cumberland Plateau, and the folded ridges and rich coves of the southern Appalachians. The state holds some of the East's great wildlife gatherings: wintering Bald Eagles and waterfowl on earthquake-formed Reelfoot Lake, thousands of Sandhill Cranes staging at the Hiwassee Refuge, the synchronous fireflies of Elkmont, and the unmatched salamander and breeding-warbler diversity of the Smokies. From USDA zone 6a on the highest mountains to 8a around Memphis, Tennessee runs the full humid four-season range of the mid-South.