Discuss the vegetative coverage and their general characteristics on the African continent

Africa has a wide variety of vegetation and range from (or between) deserts to
humid regions. In the continent of Africa the vegetation doe vary from equatorial coast
belts to the highest peaks of mountains of Africa.
In many parts of Africa the quality of vegetation cover depends on the landform
characteristics as follows:
a) The spacing of the trees and their size.
b) The height of the grasses.
c) The resulting textural patterns in colour i.e. in either green or brown.
And also this is controlled by the estimatic regimes in floristic unposition
depending on distances from the water masses.
That is why the plants of north –west Africa are comparable to those of the
Mediterranean zone.
Those plants of Sudan zone and the Sahara in south west Asia having the same climatic
conditions.
The plants of Madagascar resemble those in some parts of Africa and south East
Asia and Madagascar have peculiar features which was separated during mid-tertiary
periods.
But bigger parts of Africa the forest have been cleared for agricultural aims,
hunters have also burned savannah grasslands for driving out the animals or game.
Pastoralists have grazed their herds over the savannah grasslands exhausting some
plants over the years.

1.Also (iii) bushland with 250-625mm having bushy trees and low grass cover in
much of Eastern and North-Eastern Kenya.
Some tall woodland trees such as chipya and marguesia woodland of Zambia, are
not clearly distinguishable from the rest of rain forest.
The savannah of the more humid areas of west Africa include large number of
high-forest species and are sometimes called derived savannah because they are believed
to have replaced rain forest as a result of human activities that interfered with more
soundable tropical rain forest that altered the original or the physiognomic form.
There are other formations, dominated by evergreen trees which lack the
evergreen trees which lack the physiogromic characteristics of rain forest and so are
generally regarded as savannah.
Usually the boundary between savannah and high forest is very distinct, and such
boundaries are being sharpened every year by grass fires which are held up by islands
and peninsulas of forest and sweep through dry grasses, between gnarled fire resistant
trees typical of savannah woodland.

1.Tropical Rain Forest
Moist or Tropical Rain Forest is characterized by large number of tree species of
different heights and ages related to those forest of India and Malasia (Malaya). In places
the canopy is open and some parts the canopy is very closed.
Some forests are characterized by lianas, especially where young trees crowd
together or in dense formation.
Sometimes leaves and branches from canopies or layers into two three levels of
over 40 to 50ft above the ground, but some layers are at about 100ft where trees are
extremely tall.
And the so called emergent tall trees obtain the height of 150ft or even higher
than this level.
Tropical Rain Forest are usually confined to lowland zones where rainfall is
equally distributed throughout the year with annual rainfall totals of over 1500mm (about
60in.).
In dries margins the number of tree species of evergreen becomes less and less
and the number of deciduous trees increases. Here soil differences have a greater effect
on the flora composition.
Such composition of the forest varies too with altitude, where forests above about
3000ft (about 1000m) including only 1/10 of the species normally found in the lowland
rain forest.
Such montane forests are scattered all across Africa, from Cameroon mountain to
the highlands bordering the rift valley and beyond to the slopes of the East Africa
volcanic mountains to the east of rift valley, where the assemblages of tree species found
in each of these forests indicate a striking similarities.
In order to give evidence (or explain) to this situation there has been a suggestion
that sometimes during quaternary period when the climate was cooler than now, forest of
the montane type may have reached down much further to occupy a continues belt across
the upland country of central Africa of which the patches are merely (or little) remnants.
Within low-lying swampy zones, for especially near the Niger delta and on the
floor of the Congo basin, where rivers flood wide zones for months at a time, the forest
trees are adapted to life in fresh- water swamps and stand high on silt roots.
Around the coasts of east and west Africa, especially in the Niger delta, where
alluvium is inundated for much of the time with fresh or brackish water, the mangroves

2. Tropical Savannah (i) Moist Woodland Savannah, (ii) Dry Woodland
Savannah
The term ‘Savannah’ means a mixture of grass and trees, but there are many kinds of
savannah:
(i) Woodland grassland (as above no(i), having annual rainfall of 600-1370mm –
i.e. open mixture of trees and shrubs and tall growth of grass and common in
most area of Uganda.
(ii) Woodland (as above no. (ii), with annual rainfall of 750-1120mm, i.e. with
rather long dry season.
Trees here form a mainly continuous cover over ground vegetation of grasses,
herbs and shrubs e.g. miombo woodland in much of Central Tanzania.
Usually, the term savannah is used to denote (indicate, the sign) the sub-humid
tropical woodland and grassland, which occupies the plateau region/area/one of south
central and east Africa.
This zone extends westward along the northern margins of the Congo River Basin
to the Atlantic coast south of the Gambia River.
A number of plant species in the northern part are closely related to those of
Indian parts or some regions in India. Others are more typical of south-central Africa.
The savannah flora south of the Equator is very rich in plants and a remarkable
number of the plants here are able to resist fire and drought. Brachystegia trees are among
the most typical trees of south and east Africa, and they are not found in West Africa.
Risophera and Avicennia have colonized the muds and overhang winding creeks and
pools.

3. Desert Steppe (Steppe and Desert)
Within the desert margins, where the mean annual rainfall decreases to less than
510mm (20in), the proportion of thorny species in the woodland increases, grasses are
shorter than in the more humid savannah and plants are more specialized in their
adaptation to drought conditions.
As the rainfall decreases still further the gaps between plants increase and
eventually vegetation is confined mainly to the margins of storm-water channels and the
borders of temporary lakes where trees such as date-palms, tamarisk, and certain acacias
can obtain water from soil at depth.

---

Titany answered the question on January 17, 2022 at 13:35