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Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

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Southwest Arabian Escarpment shrublands and woodlands

Biome

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

Biogeographic realm

Afrotropic

Region photo - Aboluay / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0; attribution required.

Southwest Arabian Escarpment shrublands and woodlands

The Southwest Arabian Escarpment Shrublands and Woodlands (also mapped as the Southwestern Arabian foothills savanna) drape the steep western escarpment of the Arabian Peninsula, spanning the Asir Mountains of Saudi Arabia, the western highlands of Yemen, and reaching into Oman as the land rises from the Red Sea coast toward 2,000 meters. Drought-deciduous thorn woodlands, evergreen woodlands, shrublands, and dry grasslands clothe these slopes, with Acacia and Commiphora the signature genera, while the wetter western escarpment carries a dense evergreen canopy of mature trees reaching 30 meters dominated by Combretum and Terminalia, and seasonal wadis are lined with Breonadia, Cordia, Ficus, and Mimusops. The climate is tropical to semi-arid, but the escarpment intercepts far more moisture than the surrounding desert, and its terraced slopes act as moist refugia in an otherwise arid setting. Lying within both the Horn of Africa and Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspots, the ecoregion is rich in plant endemism and shelters the critically endangered Arabian leopard, the hamadryas baboon, and endemic birds such as Philby's partridge and the Yemen warbler, though overgrazing and cutting for timber and charcoal leave it with little formal protection. Gardeners will recognize the desert rose (Adenium obesum), a widely grown ornamental succulent that grows wild among this flora.

RESOLVE 108

Afrotropic

38,895 sq mi

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

Landscape type

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

Plant region

Afrotropic

Region footprint

38,895 sq mi

Habitat pressure

Nature Could Recover (Dinerstein NNH 3)

Source & care

Plants that can handle this region

A climate-fit shortlist from Plotwright's catalog. Start with the reliable fits, then use each plant page to check light, water, soil, mature size, and local availability.

Showing 208 of 208 climate-fit plants for this region.

Reliable climate fits

Good bets for now and later

208 plants

These plants fit the region today and stay within range under the mid-century projection. Start here when you want choices with the least climate regret.

Yucca filamentosa

Adam's needle

A virtually stemless, broadleaf-evergreen native of central and eastern North America: a basal rosette of rigid, sword-shaped, spine-tipped leaves up to 30 inches long, fringed along the margins with the curly white threads that give the species its name. In early summer a flowering stalk shoots from the center to 5 to 8 feet, carrying nodding, bell-shaped, creamy-white flowers. Tough enough for poor sandy soil, heat, drought, and salt spray, it earns its keep as architectural structure in dry and seaside gardens.

Shrub

Full sun / Part shade

A tall, summer-growing cormous perennial from across sub-Saharan Africa, grown for arching spikes of large, hooded, orange-to-red-and-yellow flowers in summer over fans of sword-shaped leaves. This is the widespread wild African gladiolus and a key ancestor of the big garden gladioli. Unlike the winter-growing Cape bulbs, it is a SUMMER-GROWING corm: plant in spring, grow and flower through summer, then it dies back to a dormant corm for winter. It wants full sun, well-drained soil, and summer moisture, and is one of the hardier species gladioli - surviving to about USDA zone 7 with a deep winter mulch or by lifting the corms in cold-winter areas. The corms are toxic and irritant if eaten and have been used in traditional medicine, never as food. In the wild the hooded flowers are pollinated by sunbirds and long-tongued insects.

A bold, clump-forming evergreen perennial from South Africa, grown for big rounded umbels of trumpet-shaped blue (or white) flowers held on tall bare stalks above arching, strap-shaped leaves in mid-to-late summer. It is widely sold as "lily of the Nile," but that is a misnomer - the plant is South African (the Cape provinces and KwaZulu-Natal), not from the Nile. Spectacular and easy in warm climates, this evergreen Agapanthus is frost-tender, so in cold-winter areas it is grown in a container and overwintered under cover. The RHS has given several Agapanthus praecox forms its Award of Garden Merit and rates this evergreen species half-hardy (H3 - needs winter protection).

Perennial

Full sun / Part shade

A tall, bold warm-season annual from Mexico and Guatemala (the "African" name is a misnomer of its European garden history) grown for large, fully double, pompon-like flowerheads in saturated yellow, gold, and orange over strongly aromatic, finely divided foliage. Plants reach 1 to 4 feet and bloom from early summer to frost in full sun. The petals are edible and used as a culinary garnish and natural dye, and the flowers are the iconic "flor de muerto" of Mexican Day of the Dead. Despite the wide listed zone range it is frost-tender and grown for a single warm season.

Annual

Full sun / Part shade

Spathodea campanulata

African tulip tree

One of the world's most spectacular flowering trees and, in the same breath, one of its most dangerous invaders. Spathodea campanulata is a large, fast-growing tropical tree native to the moist forests of West and Central Africa (GBIF), carrying a dense crown of glossy compound leaves topped by showy, upturned clusters of big, frilly, scarlet-to-orange, tulip-shaped flowers (the boat-shaped buds hold water). It is glorious - and it is a serious invasive. The African tulip tree is listed among the IUCN "100 of the world's worst invasive species"; outside its native range it has overrun wet-tropical forests across the Pacific, Hawaii, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia and Australia, and its flowers can be lethal to native bees. Plant it ONLY where it is genuinely native or where it cannot escape, and first check that it is not prohibited locally - do not plant it in any tropical region where it can naturalise. It is frost-tender (USDA 10a-11), fast, and wants full sun and moisture; in cold-winter climates it is grown only as a tender container specimen kept frost-free. It is an ornamental, not a food plant.

Aloe vera is a succulent perennial grown almost everywhere as an easy houseplant: a low rosette of thick, fleshy, toothed, grey-green leaves filled with the clear gel it is famous for. POWO (Kew) gives its native range as the Arabian Peninsula, though the exact wild origin is uncertain after millennia of cultivation, and it is now grown worldwide as the familiar medicinal aloe. Indoors it wants bright light or a sunny windowsill and very infrequent watering - it is highly drought-tolerant and rots if overwatered, which is the single most common way to kill it. Its uses are genuinely nuanced: the clear inner leaf gel is widely applied to skin (minor burns) and is consumed in aloe juices and drinks, but the yellow latex just beneath the rind is a powerful laxative and irritant that should not be casually eaten (and is best avoided in pregnancy), and the whole plant is toxic to cats and dogs. It is frost-tender and hardy outdoors only in roughly USDA zones 9b-11; everywhere colder it lives in a pot. RHS gives it the Award of Garden Merit as an easy succulent houseplant and rates it H1C. Its air-purifying reputation, drawn from a single 1989 NASA chamber study, is negligible at realistic room densities - grow it for the plant itself, not to clean your air.

Hippeastrum x hybridum

Amaryllis

Hippeastrum x hybridum is a complex garden hybrid derived from six or more wild Hippeastrum species native to tropical and subtropical South America, developed through intensive breeding since the late 18th century and now the dominant "amaryllis" sold worldwide as a holiday bulb. It produces spectacular trumpet-shaped flowers - 5 to 8 inches across - on stout leafless scapes in red, pink, white, orange, salmon, or bicolour, making it one of the most dramatic winter-flowering houseplants available. The honest catch is toxicity: the entire plant, especially the bulb, contains lycorine and related alkaloids at concentrations that cause vomiting, salivation, tremors, and hypotension in pets and children, so it must be placed out of reach and handled with care.

Perennial

Part sun / Part shade

American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is a loose, open, arching deciduous shrub of the southeastern and south-central United States, grown almost entirely for one spectacular autumn trick. Through summer it is a quiet green background plant, carrying small clusters of pink-to-lilac flowers tucked into the leaf axils. Then, from late summer into fall, those clusters ripen into tight whorls of vivid magenta-purple berries that wrap right around the stems at every leaf joint, so the arching branches look strung with beads. Songbirds strip them through fall and early winter. It is an easy, fast-growing, forgiving native that asks for little: full sun to part shade, ordinary well-drained soil, and room to arch. Site it where the fall berry show can be seen, because in leaf and flower it is plain, and in fruit it is one of the most distinctive shrubs you can grow.

Shrub

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

Dierama pulcherrimum, angel's fishing rod, is an arching, more-or-less evergreen cormous perennial in the iris family (Iridaceae), endemic to the open summer-rainfall grasslands of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It forms grassy tufts of long, narrow leaves from which tall, wiry, arching flower stems rise to about 4.9 feet (occasionally to 5.9 feet), each hung with pendulous, bell-shaped rosy-pink to purple flowers in summer - the namesake "fishing rod" silhouette over a pond or in a gravel garden. It is the load-bearing caution to note that this is only a borderline-hardy plant: RHS rates it H4 (hardy to roughly 14 to 23°F / USDA ~8b-9), so in colder zones it needs a sheltered, sunny, sharply drained spot, a winter mulch, or container/glasshouse protection, and it resents disturbance once established. It is not recorded as toxic - though it is grown purely as an ornamental and is not a food plant, so treat it as inedible. It is well-behaved (Least Concern in the wild, no recorded weediness) and suits borders, pond margins, and containers in mild-temperate gardens.

Brugmansia suaveolens

Angel's trumpet

Angel's trumpet (Brugmansia suaveolens) is a large, soft-wooded shrub or small tree hung with enormous pendulous trumpet flowers - up to 12 inches long, white aging to soft blush, and intensely fragrant in the evening and at night. Native to the Atlantic Forest of south-eastern Brazil (POWO, Kew; Flora e Funga do Brasil), it is now classified Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN and survives only in cultivation, which makes a familiar garden plant quietly remarkable. It grows fast and thirsty in warmth (USDA zones 9b-11b) and is frost-tender, so in cold-winter areas it is grown in a large container and overwintered under cover. The load-bearing warning is its toxicity: EVERY PART IS HIGHLY TOXIC, loaded with tropane alkaloids (scopolamine, atropine, hyoscyamine), and poisonings can be severe or fatal - never plant it where children or pets could reach it.

Shrub

Full sun / Part shade

A tender perennial from Madagascar grown across temperate North America as a heat-loving summer annual - a mounding 6-18 inch plant in the dogbane family covered in flat five-lobed phlox-like flowers from June to frost. The species blooms rosy-pink to red with a darker mauve throat, and it shrugs off the hot, humid weather that wilts most bedding plants. Every part of the plant is poisonous: it is the natural source of the vinca alkaloids used in chemotherapy.

Annual

Full sun / Part shade

A deciduous Eastern-Asian fruit tree with a rounded, spreading crown that the Missouri Botanical Garden lists at 20 to 30 feet tall and wide. Oval leaves emerge yellowish-green, mature to glossy green, and turn gold to red in fall; fragrant but insignificant late-spring flowers give way to showy orange persimmons (3 to 4 inches) that ripen in late fall and may persist on bare branches into winter. Winter hardy to USDA Zones 7-10 and drought tolerant once established.

Asparagus officinalis

Asparagus

A long-lived herbaceous perennial vegetable grown for the tender young spears harvested in April and May before they unfurl. Native to Europe and temperate Asia, it grows from a crown that takes 2-3 years to come into production but then yields for fifteen years or more. Spears left uncut grow into airy 3-4 foot summer ferns; the plants are dioecious, and female plants ripen ornamental red berries in late summer.

A frost-tender broadleaf evergreen tree of the laurel family, native to Mexico and Central America and grown across the tropics and subtropics for its buttery, pear-shaped fruit. Glossy dark-green elliptic leaves 4 to 8 inches long clothe a tree that reaches 30 to 60 feet, hung with greenish-yellow flower panicles that give way to large single-seeded berries. Hardy only in USDA zones 10-12 - north of that it is an indoor curiosity easily sprouted from a pit, but one that rarely fruits.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

A bushy, semi-evergreen small shrub (subshrub) grown for an exceptionally long succession of two-lipped flowers - classically bright red or magenta-pink, with many named cultivars such as the bicolour 'Hot Lips' - borne from early summer right up to the first frosts. Its small aromatic leaves are often said to smell of blackcurrant when crushed. One of the very best garden plants for pollinators in a hot, dry, sunny spot, it is tough and free-flowering but only borderline hardy (RHS H4): in cold-winter climates it needs a warm, sheltered position and sharp drainage and is often grown as a tender perennial. It is an ORNAMENTAL salvia and is NOT the culinary sage (that is Salvia officinalis) - it is grown for flowers and pollinators, not for food.

A low, ground-hugging warm-season annual legume domesticated in West Africa (around present-day Mali and Nigeria) and grown across the continent as a hardy indigenous pulse (GBIF). Trifoliate leaves rise on short, creeping stems, and after the tiny flowers are pollinated their stalks bend down and push the developing pods into the soil, so the crop ripens UNDERGROUND like a peanut. The round, hard seeds are remarkably rich in both protein and carbohydrate, making bambara groundnut a near-complete food and a staple where harsher conditions defeat other beans. It is famously DROUGHT-tolerant and productive on hot, poor, sandy soils, fixing its own nitrogen, but it is a FROST-TENDER, warm-season annual that needs a long, warm season for the underground pods to fill. RHS lists it as a tender, drought-tolerant warm-season annual pulse for full sun, its pods ripening underground (RHS). Outside the tropics it is grown as a summer annual, sown after the last frost once the soil is warm.

A giant herbaceous perennial from Southeast Asia and the principal wild ancestor of most cultivated dessert bananas. What looks like a trunk is a 'pseudostem' - tightly rolled leaf sheaths - topped by a fountain of huge, paddle-shaped leaves that can run 6 to 10 feet long, giving an instant tropical effect. In frost-free climates (USDA zones 10a-11b) an established clump produces a drooping flower spike and a hanging bunch of edible fruit, then that pseudostem dies and is replaced by a sucker from the base. It is frost-tender: everywhere colder it is grown as a bold container or greenhouse foliage plant that is overwintered indoors and rarely, if ever, fruits.

Perennial

Full sun / Part shade

Gerbera jamesonii, the Barberton daisy (also Transvaal daisy), is a tufted evergreen perennial herb in the daisy family (Asteraceae) native to the summer-rainfall grasslands and rocky woodland of north-eastern South Africa and Eswatini. It forms a basal rosette of lobed leaves from which leafless flowering scapes rise, each topped by a single large daisy-style flowerhead in orange-red, yellow, pink, or white. It is the wild ancestor of the thousands of florist gerbera cultivars and earns its place as a long-blooming focal point in borders and patio containers, attractive to bees and other insects. The load-bearing caution is frost-tenderness: RHS rates it H1C, meaning it survives outdoors only in summer or the very mildest, frost-free spots and must be overwintered under glass elsewhere (roughly USDA 9-11). It is non-toxic, with no reported poisoning hazard to people or pets, making it a safe choice where toxicity is a concern.

The Mediterranean evergreen whose leathery, glossy dark-green leaves are the bay leaf of the kitchen. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describes it as a pyramidal, aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub that can reach 60 feet but is usually seen at 10 to 30 feet and is often pruned to 8 feet or less for garden use. Trees are dioecious: small yellowish-green spring flowers on female plants, if pollinated, give way to single-seeded purple-black berries. Winter hardy only to USDA Zone 8, so it is grown as a clipped container houseplant farther north.

Shrub

Full sun / Part shade

Bear's breeches is a bold Mediterranean perennial whose dramatically lobed, glossy leaves inspired the Corinthian column capital of classical architecture. Its wild native range spans the central and eastern Mediterranean - Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, the Balkans, Greece, the Aegean, Anatolia and the Levant, plus NW Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia); it is naturalised (not native) further west into Iberia. In gardens it serves as an architectural statement plant, producing tall white-and-purple flower spikes in summer on established clumps. The honest catch is its root system: fleshy, deep-running tuberous roots regenerate readily from the smallest fragment, making Acanthus mollis genuinely difficult to eradicate once established and a declared invasive in Australia and New Zealand, so site selection is a permanent decision.

Perennial

Full sun / Part shade

The classic German or common-flag iris - the presumed parent of most modern bearded-iris cultivars, probably native to southern Europe and the Mediterranean and naturalized widely. Each stalk carries up to six large, usually fragrant flowers in spring: three erect lilac standards above three purple falls marked with brown veins, white bases, and the signature yellow "beard." It has no bulb, spreading instead by creeping rhizomes that form large clumps, with sword-shaped basal foliage to about two feet.

Protea neriifolia, the bearded protea, is a tall, robust evergreen fynbos shrub from the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, grown for its large goblet-shaped flower heads of soft pink-to-cream bracts - each one rimmed with a distinctive 'beard' of black or white fur at the bract tips. Narrow, oleander-like leaves clothe the stems, and the long-lasting blooms are a staple of the cut-flower trade. It is one of the easiest, longest-flowering, and most widely grown proteas, but it is FROST-TENDER (RHS H3, hardy to only about 25°F briefly) and belongs in a warm-temperate or Mediterranean climate, USDA zones 9a-11, or under glass. Like all of its family it is PHOSPHORUS-SENSITIVE: ordinary phosphate fertiliser or bone meal will kill it, and it demands acidic, sharply-drained soil, full sun, and good air circulation. In its homeland the nectar-rich heads are bird-pollinated by sunbirds and sugarbirds.

Amaryllis belladonna, the belladonna lily (also Jersey lily, naked-lady, or March lily), is a bulbous perennial geophyte from the Western Cape of South Africa. It is grown for its dramatic autumn display: leafless stems carry umbels of 6-12 fragrant, funnel-shaped pink to rose flowers that appear before the strap-shaped leaves emerge (a hysteranthous "naked lady" habit). It suits the front-to-mid border, gravel and Mediterranean-style plantings, and large containers in a hot, sheltered, sun-baked spot. Be plain about two cautions: the bulb is only modestly frost-hardy (roughly USDA 8/9-11; RHS H4) and is best given the warmest, driest position available in cooler areas, and ALL parts of the plant are TOXIC, containing lycorine and related Amaryllidaceae alkaloids that cause vomiting and diarrhea if eaten by people or pets. It also naturalizes readily in mild Mediterranean climates, so site it where self-sown spread is welcome.

Hydrangea macrophylla

Bigleaf hydrangea

A woody, deciduous flowering shrub in the Hydrangeaceae, native to Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia and long grown as the classic "hortensia" or French hydrangea. NC State Extension describes a rounded shrub 3 to 6 feet tall and wide with large opposite, simple, toothed leaves (4 to 8 inches long) and big rounded mop-head or flat lacecap flower clusters in late spring and summer in white, pink, blue, or purple. Famously, flower color tracks soil chemistry - acidic soils push the blooms blue and alkaline soils turn them pink. It wants protection from hot afternoon sun and steady moisture, making it a mainstay of shaded foundation plantings and woodland borders.

Shrub

Part sun / Part shade

Planting collections

Finished planting recipes where every member can handle this region's climate range. The fit badge uses the collection's most sensitive plant, so a resilient collection is a safer starting point than any single standout.

Paper flower (Bougainvillea glabra) - a mature plant trained as a dense rounded shrub, showing the whole-plant habit with its dense, thorny, evergreen green-leaved canopy.

Chinese hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) - large funnel-shaped flower, long projecting staminal column, red throat, glossy toothed leaves.

Sweet thorn (Vachellia karroo) - broad, rounded crown of fine bipinnate foliage typical of the sweet thorn, golden puff-ball flowers densely covering the canopy in summer flush, mature single-trunk tree habit set in its native south african veld/grassland.

A Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis) shrub with arching evergreen foliage and clusters of slender orange tubular flowers.

Climate-resilient · 6 plants

Warm flowering screen

A colorful warm-climate screen and hedge palette for frost-light gardens: flowering shrubs, scrambling color, wildlife nectar, and dry-season structure.

Lion's ear (wild dagga)

Cape leadwort

Starter kits for this region

Generated from catalog plants that already pass this region's climate fit gate, with native matches sorted first when the catalog has enough coverage.

Sunny pollinator border

A sunny, wildlife-forward planting assembled from plants that pass this region fit gate.

Native fit: 0/6

Climate resilient: 6/6

Wildlife links: 13

Host/specialist links: 1

Forage/pollination links: 16

Shelter links: 0

Adam's needle - Climate-resilient African gladiolus - Climate-resilient African lily - Climate-resilient African marigold - Climate-resilient American beautyberry - Climate-resilient Angel's fishing rod - Climate-resilient

Shade-edge planting

A softer edge kit for woodland margins, porches, and mixed-light garden edges.

Native fit: 0/6

Climate resilient: 6/6

Wildlife links: 11

Host/specialist links: 1

Forage/pollination links: 14

Shelter links: 0

Adam's needle - Climate-resilient African lily - Climate-resilient African marigold - Climate-resilient Aloe vera - Climate-resilient Amaryllis - Climate-resilient American beautyberry - Climate-resilient

Resilient shrub layer

A woody structure layer led by plants that fit both current and projected regional conditions.

Native fit: 0/6

Climate resilient: 6/6

Wildlife links: 8

Host/specialist links: 1

Forage/pollination links: 11

Shelter links: 0

Adam's needle - Climate-resilient African tulip tree - Climate-resilient American beautyberry - Climate-resilient Angel's trumpet - Climate-resilient Asian persimmon - Climate-resilient Avocado - Climate-resilient

Similar planting regions

Browse other regions in the same biome. Their plant lists can suggest species and combinations worth comparing.

Aldabra Atoll's turquoise lagoon inside a scrub-darkened reef rim, seen from a passing aircraft, Seychelles.

RESOLVE 91 - Afrotropic

Aldabra Island xeric scrub

The Aldabra Island xeric scrub covers the coral atoll of Aldabra in the Seychelles, an isolated landform in the western Indian Ocean lying roughly 400 km northwest of Madagascar. Its xeric vegetation falls into two main types: dense thickets of Pemphis acidula on the saline, low-lying ground, and a mixed scrub of low trees, shrubs, herbs, and grasses spread across most of the atoll. The climate is tropical, with an average annual temperature near 27 degrees Celsius and about 1,200 mm of rainfall, split into a wetter season from November to April and a drier stretch from May to October. The terrestrial flora includes roughly nine fern species and 178 flowering plants, of which about 38 percent are thought to be endemic. Aldabra is best known for hosting the world's largest population of giant tortoises and the flightless Aldabra white-throated rail, and the atoll has been protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982.

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

RESOLVE 92 - Afrotropic

Djibouti xeric shrublands

The Djibouti xeric shrublands form a semi-desert belt along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coasts of the Horn of Africa, spanning Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia (including Somaliland) and encompassing the Afar Triangle, a lowland that drops as much as 160 metres below sea level at fault depressions such as the Danakil and Lac Assal. Vegetation grades from coastal mangroves into open grass and shrub steppe, with thorny acacias such as Acacia (Vachellia) tortilis and Senegalia mellifera, the spiny Rhigozum somalense, and the desert date Balanites aegyptiaca characteristic of the sandy plains and basaltic lava fields. The climate is extremely hot and arid, with mean annual rainfall ranging from under 100 millimetres near the coast to around 200 millimetres further inland, and the tectonically active rift includes some of the hottest sites in Africa. The ecoregion is notable for harboring the last viable population of the African wild ass alongside the endemic Archer's lark and the dragon tree Dracaena ombet, which clings to higher arid hills. For gardeners in hot, dry climates, several drought-adapted natives here-the architectural Dracaena dragon trees and tough Acacia and Balanites genera-are familiar xeric ornamentals.

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

RESOLVE 93 - Afrotropic

Eritrean coastal desert

The Eritrean coastal desert is a narrow, arid strip running along the southern Red Sea coast of Eritrea and Djibouti, a flat sand-and-gravel plain lying below about 200 metres and broken by rocky outcrops. Vegetation is sparse herbaceous steppe dotted with scattered umbrella thorn (Acacia tortilis) and Acacia asak, alongside drought-hardy grasses such as Panicum turgidum, Cymbopogon schoenanthus, and Lasiurus scindicus, with halophytic plants and small mangrove stands in sheltered coastal creeks. The climate is extremely hot and dry, with annual rainfall averaging under 100 millimetres and highly variable from year to year, and minimum temperatures among the highest recorded anywhere in Africa. Despite the harsh setting, the region still supports Dorcas and Soemmerring's gazelles along with the diminutive Salt's dik-dik, and the adjacent Bab-el-Mandeb Strait channels one of the world's largest intercontinental raptor migrations each autumn, when hundreds of thousands of birds of prey cross from Arabia into Africa. For gardeners in hot, dry climates, the native umbrella thorn acacias and clumping desert grasses found here illustrate the kind of heat- and drought-tolerant planting the region naturally favours.

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

RESOLVE 94 - Afrotropic

Gariep Karoo

The Gariep Karoo is an arid, open shrubland in the Afrotropic realm that stretches from the middle of South Africa's Northern Cape northward across the Orange River (also called the Gariep River, which forms the border between the Northern Cape and Namibia's ǁKaras Region) into southern Namibia. Its sparse, low-shrub vegetation is dominated by succulent dwarf shrubs and tall stem-succulents including quiver trees, with characteristic genera such as Drosanthemum, Eriocephalus, Galenia, Pentzia, Pteronia and Ruschia, alongside perennial grasses like Aristida and Stipagrostis. The climate is harsh, with mid-summer maximum temperatures exceeding 36 degrees Celsius, mid-winter minimums dropping below freezing, frequent droughts, and annual rainfall between 50 and 500 millimetres that decreases from east to west. The region holds the dramatic Fish River Canyon in southern Namibia and supports the ferruginous lark, its endemic flagship bird, yet it remains poorly protected against a 40 percent conservation target. For gardeners in dry climates, its drought-hardy natives such as quiver trees and succulent shrubs in the genera Ruschia and Drosanthemum are well suited to xeric, low-water plantings.

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

RESOLVE 95 - Afrotropic

Hobyo grasslands and shrublands

The Hobyo grasslands and shrublands form a long, narrow coastal strip in Somalia, running along the Indian Ocean from south of Mogadishu northwards past the town of Hobyo, where a belt of wind-built dunes some 10 to 15 kilometers wide fringes the shore. The dunes carry distinctive grassland and low scrub: wind-tolerant grasses and sedges first colonize the bare sand, while denser thickets of Aerva javanica, Indigofera sparteola, and Jatropha pelargoniifolia hold the more stable ground. The climate is hot and dry, with rainfall concentrated in a short April-to-June season as the Intertropical Convergence Zone shifts north. Part of the Somali-Masai centre of plant endemism, the ecoregion shelters several species found nowhere else, including the silver dik-dik, the Somali golden mole, and the endemic Ash's lark and Obbia lark, yet it lies almost entirely outside any protected area. Gardeners working hot, sandy, low-water sites may recognize relatives of its native dune flora, such as the drought-hardy Aerva and Indigofera.

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

RESOLVE 96 - Afrotropic

Ile Europa and Bassas da India xeric scrub

This Afrotropic desert and xeric shrubland ecoregion covers two small coralline islands, Europa and Bassas da India, a French overseas territory scattered in the Mozambique Channel about a third of the way from southern Madagascar toward southern Mozambique, with the two islands lying roughly 100 km apart. The low-lying landscape of Europa is clothed in dry forest of silver thicket (Euphorbia stenoclada), a grassy herbaceous formation of Sclerodactylon macrostachyum, coastal shrubland including bay cedar (Suriana maritima), and mangrove swamps of Rhizophora mucronata fringing a shallow lagoon open to the sea. The climate is semi-arid and tropical with wet summers and dry winters, dominated by southeast trade winds in the austral winter and the occasional cyclone. The islands are an internationally important refuge: Europa is one of the world's largest nesting grounds for green sea turtles and hosts a major great frigatebird colony along with endemic lizards and seabirds, and the area is protected as a Ramsar wetland. For gardeners, the native flora here is dominated by drought-tolerant succulent Euphorbia and salt-tolerant coastal genera adapted to heat and limited rainfall.

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

Where this ecoregion reaches

The countries, US states, and Canadian provinces this ecoregion touches, from a spatial join of its RESOLVE polygon against Natural Earth boundaries.

Countries

Saudi Arabia Yemen

Educator packet

Region packet

Southwest Arabian Escarpment shrublands and woodlands educator packet

Realm

Afrotropic

Dominant biome

Deserts & Xeric Shrublands

Approximate area

38,895 square miles

States / provinces

Not recorded

Climate descriptor

Not recorded

Classroom prompts

- Which climate and biome facts explain why this region supports its characteristic plants?

- How do native-plant and wildlife-support claims differ from a species-presence claim?

- Which source-backed facts would you cite before using this region in a classroom map activity?

Use the Sources & citations section below for page citation styles and region source links.

Sources & citations

Cite this page

For lesson plans, articles, or regional planting notes that use this Plotwright page. To cite the underlying ecoregion framework or a specific editorial profile, use the source cards below.

Plotwright. (n.d.). Southwest Arabian Escarpment shrublands and woodlands (Southwest Arabian Escarpment shrublands and woodlands). Retrieved 2026, August 20, from https://plotwright.com/regions/resolve-108

Sources for this region

This page cites Plotwright first for the compiled view, then lists the upstream framework, climate, and editorial source pages so readers can cite the original material directly.

RESOLVE 2017 Terrestrial Ecoregions (Dinerstein et al.)

Primary ecoregion framework

One Earth

Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation

Open source

Source guide