Shrubs

Devred distinguishes various categories of shrub savannah on the 1:5 000 000 vegetation map:

  • "Transitional Guinean shrub savannah, tinged with Sudano-Zambezian elements" in the southern Kwango region in Bas-Zaïre and Bandundu provinces near the border with Angola;
  • "Zambezian shrub savannah" in Shaba between the northern Guinean savannah zone to the north and the Zambezian tropophile open forest to the south;
  • "Guinean and Sudano-Zambezian shrub savannah bordering valleys" in the region between the Kwango and Kwilu Rivers in Bandundu province;
  • "Eastern shrub savannah tinged with Sudanian elements" on the edge of Lake Albert on the border with Uganda;
  • "Transitional Guinean-eastern shrub savannah tinged with Sudanian elements" on the north-eastern borders with the Sudan and Uganda;
  • "Sudanian shrub savannah" in the midst of "Sudanian tropophile open forest" north of the previous type.

As already mentioned, some "montane and submontane sclerophyllous forest" (in Lebrun and Gilbert's classification) occurs as scrub. The same is true of some Sudano-Zambezian-type colonizing riparian forests "forming curtains or narrow galleries along water courses, colonizing marshes that are in the process of being filled in, or replacing reeds or papyrus" with Myrica spp. and Syzygium cordatum, and also of some Euphorbiaceae-based Guinean-type riparian forests with Alchornea cordifolia, Antidesma leptobotyrum and Phyllantus floribundus.

"Coastal sclerophyllous forest" (in Lebrun and Gilbert's classification) "represents the culmination of plant colonization of coastal sands and appears to have achieved a balance with the coastal climate". It occurs "mostly as groves or small spinneys" and occupies a negligible area in terms of all the scrub formations in the country.

last updated: Tuesday, January 13, 2004