subarcticadj.n.

1652 T. Urquhart Εκσκυβαλαυρον 151 The very Scyths and Sarmats, even to the almost subarctick incolaries.

1824 Edinb. Jrnl. Sci. 1 125 Trunks of willow and beech trees, in the northern and temperate parts of Europe; and in subarctic America.

1854 H. Miller My Schools & Schoolmasters (1858) 460 When sub-arctic molluscs lived in her [sc. Scotland's] sounds and bays.

1892 R. L. Stevenson Across Plains vi. 204 It was still broad day in our subarctic latitude [sc. in Caithness].

1930 W. M. Mann Wild Animals in & out of Zoo xx. 257 There is at times a periodic scarcity of food in the sub-Arctic regions which drives south hordes of snowy owls.

1957 G. E. Hutchinson Treat. Limnol. I. i. 78 (heading) The large lakes of subarctic Canada.

1974 ‘G. Black’ Golden Cockatrice ii. 25 The temperature was practically sub-arctic.

2005 C. Tudge Secret Life Trees v. 107 The junipers..seem to tolerate almost anything from subarctic tundra to semi-desert.

1846 Mem. Geol. Surv. Great Brit. I. 385 More than fifty species of testacea..disappeared under the chilly influences of the sub-arctic epoch which succeeded [the glacial epoch].

1876 A. Blytt Immigr. Norwegian Flora 67 We must presume that the arctic flora was here before all the others; that the subarctic [flora] came next.

1911 Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. 50 611 Blytt finds record of the following climatic changes:..3. Sub-Arctic stage, drier, many bogs became dry and were overspread by forest growth.

1934 Amer. Anthropologist 36 257 Upper Magdalenian surely continued up to the beginning of the postglacial warm period, which, after Blytt-Sernander, is generally called the subarctic or preboreal time.

1935 Discovery July 198/2 Relics from Arctic and Subarctic times during and soon after the last glaciation are still to be found in Scotland.

2000 F. W. M. Vera Grazing Ecol. & Forest Hist. (2002) iii. 68 During the sub-arctic period, birch and Scots pine became established.

1878 Atlantic Monthly Apr. 430/2 Passing from the tropics to the subarctics, from the Philippines to Canada, we find the snow-shoe,—a marvel of lightness and strength.

1898 J. W. Tyrrell (title) Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada.

1930 Nature Mag. Mar. 158/1 A wood rat, who has adapted himself to life in the frozen wilderness of the sub-arctics as well as to that of the semi-tropic deserts of the South.

1972 Sci. Amer. Mar. 123/1 It is the edge of the subarctic: a region of cold winters and cool summers.

1986 R. B. Morrison & C. R. Wilson Native Peoples iii. 69 Plano points continued in use in the western subarctic long after the Paleo-Indian stage had ended elsewhere.

2004 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) May 170 For centuries, this corner of the subarctic has been known as Grizzly Country.