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Natural vegetation is not scattered at random across the world. It lies in belts, running roughly east to west, and each belt is decided by two things only: how much rain falls, and whether it falls all year or in one season.
That is why this chapter can be learnt as a journey rather than as a list. Start at the equator, walk north, and the belts arrive in a fixed order — rainforest, savanna, desert, Mediterranean, grassland, deciduous forest, coniferous forest, tundra. The same order repeats going south, which is why southern Chile looks like Britain and South Africa's Cape looks like Italy.
Two warnings before the detail. Natural vegetation means what would grow without human interference, so the crops a region is famous for are a separate fact from its natural cover. And a climate name and a vegetation name are often different words for the same belt — Mediterranean is a climate, its vegetation is evergreen scrub.
SSC CGL and CHSL, RRB NTPC, BPSC TRE-4 general studies, UPSC Prelims and CTET social science all ask from this.
1. The temperate grassland of Argentina is known by which name?
2. The dense evergreen forest of the Amazon basin, known as the Selvas, belongs to which climatic region?
3. Which climatic region receives its rainfall in winter and has hot dry summers, and is called the orchard land of the world?
4. The largest continuous belt of softwood coniferous forest in the world is found in which region?
5. Tall coarse grass with scattered acacia and baobab trees is characteristic of which region?
6. Mosses, lichens and low sedges growing over permanently frozen subsoil, with no trees at all, describe which region?
7. Teak and sal are the typical trees of which type of forest?
8. The Veld is the temperate grassland of which region?