Vegetated areas that retain late-lying snow. Dominants may be mosses, liverworts, macrolichens, graminoids, ferns and small herbs. Snow patches are well developed in boreal and arctic mountains and in subarctic lowlands; they are well represented, though of much smaller extent, above the tree limit in the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians and Caucasus. They are found very locally in the Paeonian mountains, Sierra Nevada, Cordillera Central, Monti Sibillini, Abruzzi, Scottish Highlands and Sudeten.