The article provides a detailed review of scientific publications devoted to the study of the forests of the North Caucasus starting with the relict tertiary flora replaced by the alpine vegetation of the ice age (Kuznetsov N.I., Medvedev Ya.S.), followed by the steppe and highland-siccocolous formations (from Dagestan to the Kuban district) during the post-glacial period with the following period of steppes afforestation and new expansion of forests (Bricke). Pine and birch forests formed near the glacial center (Dagestan) began to grow on the other treeless southern slopes in the cooler and more humid post-glacial climate. Beech forests that penetrated into Nagorny Dagestan during the post-glacial period are still crowding out the pine and birch forests dominating in this area. In the western part of the North Caucasus where the climate is more humid the periglacial period was characterized by the dominating subalpine forest landscapes combined with meadow formations of the mountainous upper belts and meadow moors; it can be noted that the irrigated bottoms of the valleys caused the reduction of mountain meadow formations and their spatial assimilation with tree-shrub Periglacial complex. The eroded mountain slopes after the glaciers retreat were also characterized by the successions of small willow and willow-birch crook-stem forests and long-aged birch and pine forests with the developed mossy-suffruticose or grass cover. Besides, the other issues of succession relationships and phytocenotic evolution during the Holocene of the main forest formations of the North Caucasus were researched. The history of the forest vegetation formation in the North Caucasus during the ice age was studied on the basis of the study of succession processes, data of the spore-and-pollen analysis, pollen diagrams, peatlands, fossil plant residues of the Holocene and earlier sediments in the different territories of the North Caucasus, as well as indirect methods of analyzing the floristic composition, genetic relationships and geographical distribution of individual phytocenoses components. In the North-Western Caucasus during the whole period of the glacial age there were dark-coniferous and deciduous forests fringing the trough valleys freeing themselves from ice. In the Central Caucasus the dark-coniferous forests are replaced by deciduous ones that can be met in the inner parts of mountain systems. In the forests of Nagorny Dagestan in the majority of closed and orographically isolated valleys the pine and birch formations still dominate.