Mountain building, climate cooling and the richness of cold‐adapted plants in the Northern Hemisphere

Aim The summits of mountain ranges at mid‐latitude in the Northern Hemisphere share many ecological properties with the Arctic, including comparable climates and similar flora. We hypothesize that the orogeny during the Oligocene‐Miocene combined with global cooling led to the origin and early diversification of cold‐adapted plant lineages in these regions. Before the establishment of the Arctic cryosphere, adaptation and speciation in high...