forest ecoregions of Sundaland, Wallacea, and the Philippines Borneo montane rain forests Eastern Java–Bali montane rain forests Luzon montane rain forests Mindanao montane rain forests Peninsular Malaysian montane rain forests Sulawesi montane rain forests Sumatran montane rain forests Western Java montane rain forests Macaronesia and the Mediterranean Basin Laurel forests are found in the islands of Macaronesia in the eastern Atlantic, in particular the Azores, Madeira Islands, and Canary Islands from 400 to 1200 metres elevation. Trees of the genera Apollonias (Lauraceae), Ocotea (Lauraceae), Persea (Lauraceae), Clethra (Clethraceae), Dracaena (Ruscaceae), and Picconia (Oleaceae) are characteristic. The Garajonay National Park, on the island of La Gomera and the Laurisilva in the Madeira Island were designated World Heritage sites by UNESCO in 1986 and 1999, respectively. They are considered the best remaining examples of the Atlantic laurel forest, due to their intact nature. The paleobotanical record of the island of Madeira reveals that laurisilva forests have existed on this island for at least 1.8 million years. Around 50 million years ago, during the Paleocene, Europe took the form of a set of large islands spread through what was the Tethys Sea. The climate was wet and tropical with monsoon summer rains. Trees of the laurel and Fagaceae family (oaks with lauroid-shape leaves and Castanopsis) were common along several species of ferns. Around the Eocene, the planet began cooling, ultimately leading to the Pleistocene glaciations. This progressively deteriorated the Paleotropical flora of Europe, which went extinct in the late Pliocene. Some of these species went globally extinct (e.g. laurophyll Quercus), others survived in the Atlantic islands (e.g. Ocotea), or in other continents (e.g. Magnolia, Liquidambar) and some adapted to the cooler and drier climate of Europe and persisted as relicts in places with high mean annual precipitation or in particular river basins, such as sweet bay (Laurus nobilis) and European holly (Ilex aquifolium), which are fairly widespread around the Mediterranean basin. Descendants of these species can be found today in Europe, throughout the Mediterranean, especially in the Iberian Peninsula and the southern Black Sea Basin. The most important is ivy, a climber or vine that is well represented in most of Europe, where it spread again after the glaciations. The Portugal laurel (Prunus lusitanica) is the only tree that survives as a relict in some Iberian riversides, especially in the western part of the peninsula. In other cases, the presence of Mediterranean laurel