Sahelian Acacia savanna
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The Sahelian Acacia savanna is a broad transitional belt across the Afrotropics that separates the Sahara Desert to the north from the more humid Sudanian savannas to the south, stretching some 5,900 km from the Atlantic coast of Senegal and Mauritania eastward to the Red Sea in Sudan and Eritrea and crossing roughly a dozen countries including Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic. Its characteristic cover is wooded grassland: thorny shrubs and small trees dominated by Acacia (Acacia tortilis is the most common), alongside Balanites aegyptiaca, Boscia senegalensis, Commiphora africana, baobab (Adansonia digitata), Faidherbia albida, and shea (Vitellaria paradoxa), with annual grasses such as Cenchrus biflorus and Aristida species filling the open ground. The climate is tropical, hot, and strongly seasonal, with rainfall averaging around 600 mm in the south and declining to roughly 200 mm in the north, and frequent droughts are a defining feature. The African spurred tortoise is the ecoregion's flagship species, while endangered large mammals such as the dama gazelle, red-fronted gazelle, and western giraffe now survive mainly within a handful of protected areas in the central Sahel. For gardeners, the region is the native home of several heat- and drought-hardy ornamental and useful trees, including the baobab and shea.
About the tropical & subtropical grasslands, savannas & shrublands biome
Warm grasslands and savannas where grasses dominate and trees are scattered, maintained by seasonal rainfall, grazing, and fire. They support large herbivore communities and respond sharply to wet–dry cycles.
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.