Which Minecraft biome is Tennessee more like, dark forest or jungle?

Both are rainforest biomes that are arguably the two lushest biomes in Minecraft. Tennessee has a lot of rainforest, but it’s neither cold like New England nor hot like the Gulf of Mexico coastal regions. Also, only some of the highlands of Tennessee match the old growth taigas (Minecraft’s other rainforest biome) very well.

I think more like dark forest as we don't have the humidity of a jungle all year, but dark forest matches perfectly

Thanks for your input! I’m still curious to see what others think, though.

I'm not sure if we have many players that know Tennessee!
There are quite some users from the USA, but the USA has dozens of states!

True. However, Tennessee is one of the more populated states, so I’d be somewhat surprised if there are really very few Tennessean members; it being the sixteenth most populated state out of fifty does put it in the top third. Indeed, we have six major cities, two of which are truly massive.

Nonetheless, I do feel pretty sure that most of the state would fit best with dark forest, jungle or some of both. Regular forest and flower forest just aren’t humid nor shady enough, it’s too warm with too few conifers for taiga of any sort (except giant tree taiga at high elevations), it’s nowhere near hot enough for wooded badlands, and the rainiest landlocked state obviously wouldn’t fit well with any arid biome. Birch also isn’t particularly dominant here, so birch forest is out. On the other hand, the density of broad-leaved foliage in both dark forest and jungle is fitting, as is the excessive humidity/rain and relative warmth. Dark forest has a wider array of herbaceous flowers, a denser canopy, more fungi, occasional birches and multiple oak species. However, jungle has taller trees, vines, ferns, bamboo, a denser understory and a more fitting foliage color. The big leaves on jungle trees also exist on some of our native trees, such as magnolia and maple, but the heartwood of black walnut and black oak trees is dark like dark oak wood is.

I wonder which broad-leaved rainforest biome people think is more like Tennessee, or whether it really is hard to say for sure. I think there’s a case to be made for both, but I’m a bad decision-maker in general.

I voted Dark Forest but now I think you're right. Jungle could be closer if minus the super tall trees. Frequent rain, dense undergrowth, lots of wildlife, mixed types of trees, etc.

I just thought of even more things to consider. I'm still on the fence, though! It just seems that you really could make a good case for Tennessee being reminiscent of either jungle or dark forest. What do you think?

As for the mountains, jungles do transform into forests (sometimes) at higher elevations, but the regular forests don't have conifers like our mountains do. However, our mountains aren't usually snow-covered, even during winter (except the highest ones), unlike the grove biomes that form where dark forests get high enough.

As for swamps, we only have generic temperate/subtropical swamps. Even the coasts of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are still a tad too cold for mangrove swamps despite the warm ocean currents. However, the freshwater diversity in Tennessee and neighboring Alabama is unmatched in the USA, and the mangrove swamps have tropical fish rather than just frogs, lily pads, blue orchids and slimes. Also, while mangroves are sensitive to cold, the foliage colors of rainy areas IRL seem to be better linked to summer temperatures than spring/autumn and winter ones, and our summers are just as hot as equatorial rainforests like the Amazon rainforest, the Congo rainforest, Kerala and Singapore are (during the summer, in addition to other seasons in their cases).

Our windswept biomes would probably be more windswept savanna rather than windswept hills. Windswept hills have snow at high elevations (which again, we don't on most of the hills and lower mountains). Also, our native locust trees and invasive Persian silk trees look a lot like acacias. However, the mesothermal areas of Minecraft worlds that include dark forests can have either windswept hills or windswept savannas, depending on whether they're closer to being a warmer area or a colder one.

Last but not least, I've noticed that the bark on my southern magnolia tree and our native deciduous magnolias and tulip trees looks somewhat similar to jungle bark, at least sometimes; this is in addition to the big leaves on jungle trees that magnolias also have. However, as I mentioned above, the dark oak wood is reminiscent of black walnuts and black oaks, both of which are also common here.

P.S.: Both jungles and dark forests do have occasional azalea trees, though. They exist even in deserts and wooded badlands, but also snowy taigas. Lush caves exist in humid regions of any temperature in Minecraft, which both jungle and dark forest are. However, the azalea trees in Minecraft look a lot like our great rhododendron trees and are a similar size, so I still think it's important to mention, even though both contenders have them.

I’m just commenting because I have no idea what Tennessee looks like/where it even is on the map and I’m interested in the answers + follow thread button doesn’t appear on my phone so I have to comment to do it smh

Tennessee?

Here's Tennessee on Google Maps for those unsure where it is: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.2524433,-85.9980892,7.75z

I know where Tennessee is, it's just that such a specific and obscure question that it threw me for a loop. Why Tennessee?

also known as "the frying pan"

I assumed it was because We3 lives there.

That, and a lot of places in nearby states are virtually the same as Tennessee (or at least extremely similar) due to us being thin north-south but long east-west. For example, the mountains of northern Alabama and northern Georgia have noticeably more in common with a lot of Kentucky than they do with the coastal part of Alabama. As such, whatever fits for Tennessee would also be a good fit for most if not all of Arkansas and North Carolina and parts of several other nearby states. We're in the middle of the Upland South, so whichever broad-leaved rainforest biome in Minecraft is a good fit for here would also be a good fit for the entire region.

I'm assigning Hamilton, Hardin and Shelby counties a temperature of 3 and humidity of 4, which equates to jungle (maybe bamboo jungle in some "weird" regions). The jury's no longer out IMO in those three counties. I recently realized that Tennessee also has a wild dwarf palmetto population in Hardin County like Oklahoma does in McCurtain County and Virginia does in the Great Dismal Swamp; it's just little-known. (You can even see it from the highway not only in person but in the Google street view too.) Palms also have big leaves - much more so than even magnolias, buckeyes, yuccas and some maples do. However, Shelby and Hamilton counties are even warmer than Hardin County, so ruling out dark forest for Hardin County would make it appropriate to rule it out for Shelby and Hamilton counties too.

Nonetheless, I'm also assigning Johnson County a temperature of 2 and humidity of 2, which equates to regular forest (maybe flower forest in some "weird" regions). It's sufficiently far north and above sea level that the dwarf palmettos probably wouldn't be happy there at all, to say the least, even in the county's lowest/southernmost areas. Also, the Holston Valley is drier than most of Tennessee and comparable to the national average, which makes me doubt that jungle or dark forest would be appropriate for Johnson County regardless of its temperature; this also makes it likely that the Holston Valley has more temperature 2 or 3 and humidity 2 areas in other counties due to being more subhumid precipitation-wise, which would be assigned to regular forest (or flower forest and plains, respectively, if weirdness is positive), not jungle or dark forest (nor birch forest).

TL;DR: I'm saying jungle for Hamilton, Hardin and Shelby counties due to a little-known wild dwarf palmetto population in Hardin County. Also, I'm saying regular forest for Johnson County (which would be too cold for jungle anyways), which is now a possibility for other Holston Valley counties too due to lower precipitation. However, the jury is still out for the other 91 counties and the state as a whole, with a humidity aspect to reconsider for the subhumid Holston Valley compared to the humid rest of the state.

What do you think?

Where I grew up (East Tennessee) it was pretty humid all year round. Additionally, one of the things that stands out most in my mind about exploring the forests was the density of the undergrowth. The only forest biome in Minecraft that has a comparable density of undergrowth is the Jungle biome. Similarly, parts of the East Tennessee mountains are classified as rainforests, another argument in favor of the Jungle thesis. The admittedly major difference between the Minecraft jungle and Tennesee's rainforest is that Minecraft's rainforests are clearly intended to be a tropical rainforests, and Tennesee's rainforests are all temperate.

For me personally, though, the jungle biome more closely matches my experience of Tennessee forests, so I voted for the jungle option.

Thanks for your input! This is an interesting debate for sure!

Same here, but Middle Tennessee. Rainforests dominate the state's Appalachian areas outside of the rain-shadowed Holston Valley, and the southern half tends to be rainforested even without mountains. These are due to the effects of mountains on climate and the extreme storminess of the Gulf of Mexico, so our humidity by Minecraft standards is almost certainly 3 to 4 in the Nashville Basin and northern West Tennessee, 2 in the Holston Valley and 4 for the majority of the state. Indeed, we have both the dense understories of the jungles and the dense canopy of the dark forests, both of which are as humid as a Minecraft biome in their temperature zone can get. We also have very warm but not quite hot Aprils and Octobers, and our summers achieve equatorial-like temperatures (comparable to Amazonas, Kerala and Singapore, which are in equatorial rainforests), further adding to the ambiguity between a hot place and a temperate one. Of course though, it's nowhere near cold enough for giant tree taiga and especially not snowy taiga, nor anywhere near hot enough for wooded badlands; not to mention that we have lush summers and mostly broadleaved trees/shrubs.