Western Tien-Shan
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- November–March
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Wild relatives of familiar orchard fruits still grow in the Western Tien-Shan, mountains so botanically rich they rank among the world's centres of origin for cultivated fruit crops. Spanning Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and rising from 700 to 4,503 metres, the range folds river gorges, steppe and strikingly varied forests into one landscape, with plant communities found nowhere else. The three countries' protected areas were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.
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