The Sudano-Zambezian Region

Abstract

The Sudano-Zambezian Region comprises the vast stretches of woodland, savanna and grassland vegetation with occasional dry forests and thickets, and patches of edaphically controlled swampy vegetation, in a wide zone in Subsaharan Africa around the Guineo-Congolian Region. This latter region consists mainly of humid forests. About 75 per cent of southern Africa falls in the Sudano-Zambezian Region and, more precisely, into its Z ambezian Domain. The remaining 25 per cent of the area are made up mainly by the dry Karoo-Namib floral Region and the more temperate floras of the Afromontane Region and of Capensis. Smaller areas are comprised by the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt, the Afro-alpine Region, and the southernmost outliers of the Guineo-Congolian Region (Chapter 7, Fig. 12).

We are very much indebted to Mr Bob Drummond of the National Herbarium, Salisbury, to Mrs Estelle van Hoepen and other members of staff of the National Herbarium, Botanical Research Institute, Pretoria, and to Mrs Anja Finne of the Forest Department, Kitwe, for their generous and extensive help concerning taxonomical nomenclature. Thanks to them the species nomenclature in this chapter could be updated till December 1976. Any remaining failures are entirely our responsibility.