taiga

noun

1. A subarctic zone of evergreen coniferous forests situated south of the tundras and north of the steppes in the Northern Hemisphere.

   “The mountains run from the Arctic Island of Novaya Zemlya southwards, dividing the endless wastes of the Siberian taiga and the steppes from the Russian platform in the west.”

   “Like the taiga, he was everywhere, and mysterious—a heroic being with unearthly gifts.”

   “The taiga is anything but pristine wilderness: It is an inhabited landscape where the indigenous Sámi and their reindeer have lived ever since the ice retreated 10,000 years ago. […] Reindeer are well suited to the taiga’s frigid winters. They can maintain a thermogradient between body core and the environment of up to 100 degrees, in part because of insulation provided by their fur, and in part because of counter-current vascular heat exchange systems in their legs and nasal passages.”

name

1. A lake in Alaska.
2. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of Tayga.