Vegetation
Nigeria is covered by three types of vegetation: forests (where there is significant tree cover), savannahs (insignificant tree cover, with grasses and flowers located between trees), and montane land. (The latter is the least common, and is mainly found in the mountains near the Cameroonian border.) Both the forest zone and the savannah zone are divided into three parts.
Some of the forest zone's most southerly portion, especially around the Niger River and Cross River deltas, is mangrove swamp (see Central African mangroves). North of this is fresh water swamp, containing different vegetation from the salt water mangrove swamps, and north of that is rain forest.
The savannah zone's three categories are divided into mm' Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, made up of plains of tall grass which are interrupted by trees, the most common across the country; Sudan savannah, similar but with shorter grasses and shorter trees; and Sahel savannah patches of grass and sand, found in the northeast.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Nigeria
Famous quotes containing the word vegetation:
“I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood.... What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the poke!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter ... decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)