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The Guinea–Congo lowland rain forest: an overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

G. W. Lawson
G. W. Lawson
Affiliation:
The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD
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Extract

In a paper entitled ‘Africa – the odd man out’ Richards (1973) pointed out that of the three main regions of tropical rain forest he recognised, namely American, African and Indo–Malaysian, the African rain forest stands out as distinct from the others. He took this view largely on the comparative poverty of its flora, the wider distribution of African plants, and the poor representation of certain plant groups such as palms, orchids and trees of the family Lauraceae. In addition, Africa is relatively poorly endowed with some life forms such as lianes and epiphytes. He attributed the uniqueness of tropical Africa to a number of possible factors. In the first place, differences may be due to climate since the uniformly high rainfall, humidity, temperatures, and absence of a regular dry season that occur in parts of the other two tropical regions are evidently rare or lacking in Africa. A distinct dry season, often of over two months, is nearly always present, and even in the central Congo basin there is usually at least one month when rainfall is less than 100 mm. Secondly, the impact of human beings on vegetation has been longer and more sustained in Africa than elsewhere, so much so that the presence of any truly primeval or so-called virgin forest is very questionable. However, it is unlikely that present day climatic factors and human interference can wholly account for the unique position of African rain forest, and historical reasons must also be sought. Thus it seems probable that the vicissitudes of climate, recorded as arid and pluvial periods in African lake sediments, have been much greater than those in the other two regions in question.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B: Biological Sciences , Volume 104: Essays on the Ecology of the Guinea-Congo Rain Forest , 1996 , pp. 5 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1996

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