The λ-differences between years within regions and within sites did not differ much in magnitude from the overall year effect. Two species (Carlina vulgaris and Tragopogon pratensis) showed more variation in λ between regions, whereas Hypochaeris radicata had more λ-variation between sites within regions. The LTRE analyses furthermore showed that the region and site effects not only differed in magnitude, but more importantly also in the contributions of the deviations of the vital rates summing up to the region and site effects. Still, the same single group of vital rates covaried most closely with λ between regions and between sites: growth of survivors in C. vulgaris, seed production of flowering plants in T. pratensis and establishment probability of seedlings in H. radicata. We conclude that the life history of plant species can vary qualitatively differently between and within regions, resulting in more λ-variation between regions in some species, but in less λ-variation in another. Differences in spatial scales can therefore not be ignored when demographic variation is included in modelling studies on the population dynamics of a species across its entire distribution, for instance when investigating invasions or range-shifts due to climate change.