Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that is adapted to long periods of dryness and heat. The plants feature hard leaves, short internodes and leaf orientation which is parallel or oblique to direct sunlight. The word comes from the Greek sklēros (hard) and phyllon (leaf). The term was coined by A.F.W. Schimper in 1898, originally as a synonym of xeromorph, but the two words were later differentiated.
The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa.
The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the global conservation organization, as priorities for conservation. According to WWF, an ecoregion is defined as a "relatively large unit of land or water containing a characteristic set of natural communities that share a large majority of their species dynamics, and environmental conditions". For example, based on their levels of endemism, Madagascar gets multiple listings, ancient Lake Baikal gets one, and the North American Great Lakes get none.
The Valdivian temperate forests (NT0404) is an ecoregion on the west coast of southern South America, in Chile and Argentina. It is part of the Neotropical realm. The forests are named after the city of Valdivia. The Valdivian temperate rainforests are characterized by their dense understories of bamboos, ferns, and for being mostly dominated by evergreen angiosperm trees with some deciduous specimens, though conifer trees are also common.
The ecology of California can be understood by dividing the state into a number of ecoregions, which contain distinct ecological communities of plants and animals in a contiguous region. The ecoregions of California can be grouped into four major groups: desert ecoregions, Mediterranean ecoregions, forested mountains, and coastal forests.
The San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located in the rolling hills of El Chorro Regional Park, between San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County, within the Central Coast of California region. Its grounds, when completed, will be a 150-acre (61 ha) collection of gardens displaying the diverse plant life of the five Mediterranean climate zones of the world; the Mediterranean Basin, and regions of California, Chile, Australia, and South Africa.
Southwest Australia is a biogeographic region in Western Australia. It includes the Mediterranean-climate area of southwestern Australia, which is home to a diverse and distinctive flora and fauna.
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903.
Matorral is a Spanish word, along with tomillares, for shrubland, thicket or bushes. It is used in naming and describing a Mediterranean climate ecosystem in Southern Europe.
In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin, also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea, is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation. It was a very important part of Mediterranean civilizations.
Garrigue or garigue, also known as phrygana, is a type of low scrubland ecoregion and plant community in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
The North Saharan steppe and woodlands is a desert ecoregion, in the deserts and xeric shrublands biome, that forms the northern edge of the Sahara. It extends east and west across Northern Africa, south of the Mediterranean dry woodlands and steppe ecoregion of the Maghreb and Cyrenaica, which is part of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. Winter rains sustain shrublands and dry woodlands that form an ecotone between the Mediterranean climate regions to the north and the hyper-arid Sahara Desert ecoregion to the south.
The native flora of Chile is characterized by a higher degree of endemism and relatively fewer species compared to the flora of other countries of South America. A classification of this flora necessitates its division into at least three general zones: the desert provinces of the north, Central Chile, and the humid regions of the south.
Mediterranean scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in low-lying inland locations but can be cool near colder seas. Winters are typically mild to cool in low-lying locations but can be cold in inland and higher locations. All these ecoregions are highly distinctive, collectively harboring 10% of the Earth's plant species.
Liolaemus platei, known by the common name braided tree iguana, is a species of lizard in the family Liolaemidae. The species is endemic to Chile.
The Somali Acacia–Commiphora bushlands and thickets is a semi-arid tropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion in the Horn of Africa. It is home to diverse communities of plants and animals, including several endemic species.
The Iberian sclerophyllous and semi-deciduous forests is a Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregion in southwestern Europe. It occupies the interior valleys and plateaus of the Iberian Peninsula. The ecoregion lies mostly in Spain, and includes some portions of eastern Portugal.
The Northeastern Spain and Southern France Mediterranean forests is a Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregion in southwestern Europe. It occupies the Mediterranean coastal region of northeastern Spain, Southern France, the Balearic Islands and a small part of Italy.
The Baluchistan xeric woodlands ecoregion covers the middle elevations of a series of mountain ranges of western Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan, reaching 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) from the Arabian Sea in the south to the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Himalayas in the north. The characteristic vegetation is xeric (dry) woodlands of shrubs and herbaceous cover. The region has rich biodiversity but relatively few endemic species.
