Northern Swahili coastal forests
RESOLVE 25
The Northern Swahili Coastal Forests stretch along the East African seaboard across Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania, reaching south to the Lukuledi River and taking in the Zanzibar Archipelago islands of Unguja (Zanzibar), Pemba, and Mafia. Rather than a continuous canopy, the ecoregion is a mosaic of lowland forest patches, savannah-woodlands, bushlands and thickets, scrub forest on coral rag, and miombo woodland, with characteristic trees including Afzelia quanzensis, Cynometra, Dialium holtzii, Xylia africana, and Parkia filicoidea woven among lianas, epiphytes, and ferns. The climate is tropical, with average temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius and generally high humidity, while rainfall is highly uneven, exceeding 2,000 mm on Pemba Island but falling below 1,000 mm in northern Kenya. Botanically it is exceptionally rich, holding over 4,500 plant species and 1,050 genera with at least 400 strictly endemic, and together with the neighbouring Eastern Arc forests it forms a global center of plant endemism; its flagship animal is the Pemba flying fox.
About the tropical & subtropical moist broadleaf forests biome
Warm, wet, highly productive forests — including tropical rainforests — with closed canopies, near year-round growing seasons, and the richest terrestrial biodiversity on Earth. Low seasonality and high rainfall sustain dense, layered vegetation from canopy to forest floor.
Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion
No catalog plants intersect this ecoregion's zone range. As the catalog grows to cover this region's climate band, suggestions will surface here.
Collections for this ecoregion
No curated collection's plants all fit this ecoregion's zone range. We surface a collection only when every member would grow here — partial fits get filtered out rather than mislead. As the catalog and the curated set both grow, this section will fill in.