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Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

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Beni savanna

Biome

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

Biogeographic realm

Neotropic

Region photo - Sam Beebe / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 2.0; attribution required.

Beni savanna

The Beni savanna, also mapped as the Llanos de Moxos, is a tropical lowland savanna that lies in the southwestern Amazon basin, almost entirely within northern Bolivia's Beni Department, with small extensions into Brazil along the Iténez River and into Peru's Pampas del Heath. It forms a mosaic of seasonally flooded grassland and wetland threaded with forest islands and riverside gallery forest, where sedges and grasses give way to trumpet trees (Tabebuia ochracea), grugru palm, and stands of Attalea and Acrocomia palms in better-drained ground. The climate is tropical with a pronounced wet season from roughly December to May, when rains and snowmelt from the nearby Andes flood up to half the low-lying terrain for months at a time. It is one of South America's largest savanna complexes and the flagship home of the critically endangered, endemic blue-throated macaw (Ara glaucogularis), alongside hundreds of recorded bird species, though cattle grazing and seasonal burning press on its habitats. For gardeners, the showy native trumpet trees of the genus Tabebuia are familiar flowering ornamentals well suited to warm, seasonally wet climates.

RESOLVE 565

Neotropic

48,669 sq mi

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

Landscape type

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

Plant region

Neotropic

Region footprint

48,669 sq mi

Habitat pressure

Half Protected (Dinerstein NNH 1)

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 127 of 127 climate-fit plants for this region.

Reliable climate fits

Good bets for now and later

23 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.

Bixa orellana

Achiote

Achiote, also sold as annatto or lipstick tree, is a fast-growing evergreen shrub or small tree native from Mexico through Central America to Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina, and planted across the tropics for its seeds. Clusters of pink or white flowers about 2 inches across, like single wild roses, open at the branch tips and are followed by clusters of red to red-brown capsules covered in soft bristles, which split open to show seeds coated in a waxy red-orange layer. That coating is annatto: the coloring and mild seasoning behind achiote paste and sazón, the yellow-orange of many cheeses, butters, and margarines, and the red body paint and lipstick that gave the plant its English name. In a garden it usually stays 6 to 12 feet tall and wide as a specimen or informal hedge, though as a tree it can reach 20 to 30 feet. It is frost-tender and needs a frost-free climate: it is hardy outdoors in USDA zones 10a-12b and grown elsewhere in a large container or conservatory that comes indoors before frost. Outside its native range it has naturalized on many Pacific islands, sparingly so in Hawaii, and in the Galapagos, where the Charles Darwin Foundation rates it potentially invasive.

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

Swietenia macrophylla

Bigleaf mahogany

The premier true mahogany and one of the most commercially important tropical hardwoods on Earth: a very large neotropical timber tree that reaches roughly 100 to 150 feet with a broad, spreading, rounded crown, pinnately compound leaves, and reddish-brown heartwood prized for fine furniture and instruments. Honesty first: this is a knowledge and conservation entry, not a plant most people can or should grow. It is a frost-tender tropical giant hardy only in USDA zones 10b-12b, native to the neotropics from southern Mexico through Central America into Amazonian South America, with no role as a temperate-garden ornamental. More important than any landscape use is its conservation status - decades of overharvest for that famous mahogany timber have made it conservation-sensitive, and it is listed on CITES Appendix II, meaning international trade is regulated to keep harvest from driving the species toward extinction. Include it for its story and its scale, and source any wood or plant material only through legal, certified, sustainable channels.

Broadleaf plantain is the broad-leaved, ground-hugging weed of lawns, paths, driveways, and roadsides across North America - and, honestly, an introduced Eurasian species, not a native. It forms a flat basal rosette of broad, strongly ribbed oval leaves that presses tight to the ground, sending up slender, erect, rat-tail flower spikes through summer. Its tie to human disturbance runs so deep that some Indigenous peoples called it 'white man's footprint,' because it followed colonists wherever soil was trodden bare. Despite the weedy reputation it is genuinely undervalued for habitat: the wind-pollinated spikes are heavy pollen sources, the ripe seed feeds finches and other small birds, and it is a documented larval host for the common buckeye butterfly. The young leaves are edible cooked or in salad, with a long medicinal and poultice history.

Herb

Full sun / Part shade

Cacao is the chocolate tree - a small evergreen understory tree of the lowland tropical rainforest, famous for being cauliflorous: its tiny pink-and-white flowers, and then the large ridged football-shaped pods, are borne directly on the trunk and oldest branches rather than out among the leaves. Reaching roughly 15 to 25 feet, it carries glossy oblong leaves that flush bronze when young. Each pod holds 30-40 seeds embedded in sweet white pulp; those seeds become chocolate only after fermenting, drying, and roasting (the cacau of Brazil). It is genuinely demanding - a true tropical, needing deep humid warmth and overhead shade and failing below about 50°F - so outside the wet tropics it is a greenhouse or conservatory plant only. Its flowers are pollinated not by bees but by tiny midges.

A lax, branching nightshade from South America grown for tart-sweet golden berries, each wrapped in a papery, lantern-like husk. Despite the name it is unrelated to true gooseberries: the "Cape" is usually traced to its early cultivation at South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and it is also known as goldenberry, Peruvian groundcherry, and poha. Taller and longer-lived than the ground cherry, it reaches 3.3 to 4.9 feet with velvety heart-shaped leaves and nodding yellow flowers marked with chocolate-brown centers. It is a reliable perennial only where frost is absent and is grown as a summer annual or a greenhouse plant everywhere colder. Only the fully ripe fruit is eaten - the husk, leaves, stems, flowers, and unripe fruit are poisonous - and it has become invasive in Hawaii and on other Pacific islands.

Schlumbergera x buckleyi

Christmas cactus

The true Christmas cactus - the hybrid Schlumbergera x buckleyi - a long-lived epiphytic holiday cactus grown indoors almost everywhere for its arching, segmented stems and its rose-to-magenta flowers that open in mid-winter, around Christmas. It is worth getting the identity right, because most plants sold and labeled as 'Christmas cactus' are actually the Thanksgiving cactus, Schlumbergera truncata. You can tell the two apart by the edges of the flat stem segments and by when they bloom: the true Christmas cactus has rounded, scalloped segment margins and flowers a few weeks later, in mid-winter, while the Thanksgiving cactus has sharp, claw-like teeth and blooms from late fall into early winter. Unlike a desert cactus, this is a forest epiphyte that grows on tree branches in the Atlantic coastal forest of southeastern Brazil, so it wants bright indirect light, a free-draining mix, sparing water, and - to set its buds - cool nights and short days. A reassuring point that sets it apart from many houseplants: it is non-toxic to cats and dogs. One more field mark clinches it: the true Christmas cactus has rose-pink pollen and flowers that hang almost regularly (radially), where the Thanksgiving cactus has yellow pollen and asymmetric blooms held out nearly horizontally.

A warm-season member of the nightshade family (Solanaceae) - a relative of tomato, potato, and pepper - grown for its showy, glossy edible berries that range from white and green through deep purple to nearly black depending on cultivar. The plant is technically a tender herbaceous perennial but is grown as an annual vegetable across most of North America, where it demands a long, hot, frost-free season to fruit well. Drooping violet star-shaped flowers give way to the familiar pendant fruit; the leaves, flowers, stems, and roots are toxic and only the fruit is eaten.

A tropical evergreen tree from the lowland rainforests of western and central Africa, grown almost everywhere else as a dramatic indoor specimen for its huge, glossy, fiddle- (or violin-) shaped leaves with bold sunken veins. In its native habitat it becomes a 40-foot tree, but as a houseplant or patio container plant it is typically kept to a single upright 6-15 foot trunk topped with a sculptural rosette of leaves. Winter-hardy only in the frost-free subtropics (USDA zones 10-12); everywhere colder it is a houseplant. It is famously fussy: it wants bright, steady light, even moisture, warmth, and - above all - to be left in one spot, dropping leaves in protest at cold drafts, moves, or erratic watering.

Frangipani (also called plumeria, temple tree, or nosegay) is a small, rounded, deciduous tree from the dry, hot regions of Mexico and Central America south to Colombia and Venezuela, now planted throughout the tropics for its intensely fragrant flowers. Thick, blunt, grey-barked branches carry large leaves clustered at their tips, and from late spring to fall each branch tip ends in a cluster of five-petaled flowers, pink to red in the species, while garden forms run to white, yellow, and bicolors. In a frost-free garden it reaches 15 to 25 feet tall and wide. It is frost-tender and grows in the ground only in USDA zones 10b-12b; UF/IFAS warns that plumerias can be susceptible to cold damage, so anywhere colder it is grown in a container and wintered indoors. Broken branches bleed a milky sap that irritates skin and eyes, and the RHS lists the plant as harmful if eaten, for people and pets alike; UF/IFAS adds that plumerias are not particularly poisonous compared with other landscape plants such as oleander. It is the national flower of Nicaragua, where it is called sacuanjoche. Wikipedia reports it naturalized in most parts of tropical Asia and the Pacific Islands, but the Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk weed risk assessment found no evidence of naturalization and rates it low risk.

The true culinary ginger - a tropical-Asian herbaceous perennial grown for its aromatic, pungent, branched rhizome rather than its rarely-seen bloom. Reed-like pseudostems carry two-ranked lanceolate leaves to 2 to 4 feet, rising from a fleshy underground rhizome that is the kitchen and apothecary spice. Hardy outdoors only in USDA zones 9-12; in cooler regions it is grown as a warm-season annual or container plant and started from a fresh grocery-store rhizome each spring.

A vigorous tropical climbing and trailing vine grown almost everywhere as an easy-care houseplant, prized for glossy, heart-shaped leaves marbled and streaked with golden-yellow variegation. In the tropics it scrambles up tree trunks by aerial roots and can climb 13 to 40 feet, with juvenile leaves enlarging dramatically as it ascends; indoors, kept in a pot or trailing from a shelf, it stays only inches tall and a few feet long. It tolerates low light and infrequent watering better than almost any other foliage plant, which is why it is a beginner favorite. Native to the Society Islands of French Polynesia and now naturalized across the tropics, it is hardy outdoors only in frost-free climates (roughly USDA 10b-12b) and is an aggressive invasive weed where it escapes. All parts are toxic if chewed or eaten.

Good now, not later

Good now, less certain later

104 plants

These plants fit the region as it is today. The projection moves them outside their listed range, so treat them as shorter-horizon or higher-care choices.

Agapanthus praecox

African lily

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

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.

Aji pepper is the South American chili species behind aji amarillo, Lemon Drop, Bishop's crown and Brazil's dedo-de-moça - one of the five domesticated chili peppers, and a different plant from the familiar garden pepper (Capsicum annuum) and the habanero (Capsicum chinense). It is a perennial shrub native from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru through Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina and central and southern Brazil, and where it can live for years it grows taller than most garden peppers, up to about 6.6 feet. Its white to cream flowers are typically marked with green or gold, and its fruits, which usually hang down in cultivated forms, come in an unusually wide range of shapes, from long tapered pods to the crown-shaped Bishop's crown. Heat runs from nearly heatless types to hot ones; aji amarillo is rated around 30,000-50,000 Scoville units. It is frost tender, so outside nearly frost-free climates it is grown as a warm-weather annual.

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

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 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

The African baobab (Adansonia digitata) is the legendary "upside-down tree" of the African savanna - a massive, swollen, water-storing bottle-trunk topped by a sparse crown of stout branches that look like roots flung up into the air. GBIF gives its native range as the hot, dry savannas of mainland sub-Saharan Africa, from the Sahel south, where it is among the slowest-growing and longest-lived trees on Earth, standing for many centuries and even millennia. It bears big, pendulous, white night flowers - bat-pollinated in the wild - and large, velvety, hanging "monkey-bread" fruits whose dry pulp (very high in vitamin C, sold as "baobab powder") and young leaves are both eaten. It is a frost-tender, extremely drought-adapted tree that wants full sun, very sharp drainage, and enormous space, hardy outdoors only in roughly USDA zones 10b-11. RHS lists it as a tender, very slow-growing succulent-trunked tree: outside the tropics it is grown only as a slow potted curiosity or caudex bonsai, kept nearly dry and frost-free through the winter, when it drops its leaves.

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.

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.

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.

Tamarind (Tamarindus indica) - single woody trunk supporting a tree habit with a broad, spreading crown, fine, feathery alternate-pinnate foliage of many small leaflets, dense green canopy showing the evergreen, leafy crown form.

Marula (Sclerocarya birrea) - broad, rounded/dome-shaped spreading crown typical of a mature savanna marula, single sturdy grey-barked trunk dividing into heavy ascending main branches, dense canopy of fine compound foliage set in open red-soil grassland savanna.

Guava (Psidium guajava) - elliptic-oblong leaves with strongly impressed, prominent pinnate venation typical of guava, opposite, decussate leaf arrangement on a slender reddish-tinged young stem, upright woody seedling/sapling habit with new growth flushing at the shoot tip.

Currently suited · 6 plants

Tropical dry edible shade

A warm-climate edible structure palette for seasonal dry forests, savannas, and frost-free gardens that need shade, food value, and drought recovery.

Papaya (Carica papaya) - large, deeply palmately-lobed leaves clustered at the top of the stem, single unbranched, soft fibrous trunk (palm-like habit), cluster of green oval fruits borne directly on the upper trunk below the leaf crown.

Currently suited · 6 plants

Tropical edible canopy + patio

A frost-free edible palette for humid subtropical and tropical gardens: fruiting canopy, understory crops, edible roots, and container-friendly patio plants.

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: 5/6

Wildlife links: 9

Host/specialist links: 1

Forage/pollination links: 10

Shelter links: 0

Avocado - Climate-resilient Broadleaf plantain - Climate-resilient Eggplant - Climate-resilient Morning glory - Climate-resilient New Guinea impatiens - Climate-resilient African lily - Currently suited

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: 4

Host/specialist links: 1

Forage/pollination links: 3

Shelter links: 0

Achiote - Climate-resilient Avocado - Climate-resilient Broadleaf plantain - Climate-resilient Cacao - Climate-resilient Christmas cactus - Climate-resilient Fiddle-leaf fig - 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: 1

Host/specialist links: 0

Forage/pollination links: 1

Shelter links: 0

Achiote - Climate-resilient Avocado - Climate-resilient Bigleaf mahogany - Climate-resilient Cacao - Climate-resilient Fiddle-leaf fig - Climate-resilient Frangipani - Climate-resilient

Similar planting regions

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

Honduras pine woodland in Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, Belize.

RESOLVE 564 - Neotropic

Belizian pine savannas

The Belizian pine savannas ecoregion lies almost entirely in Belize along the northwestern Caribbean coast, with only a few very small tracts reaching into neighboring Mexico and Guatemala. Its signature habitat is open savanna dominated by Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea), woven into a mosaic that also includes calabash tree, white oak species, nanche, and everglades (Paurotis) palm, with closed pine forests in the premontane interior near the Maya Mountains. The climate is tropical monsoon (Koppen Am), warm through the year with a pronounced dry season and roughly 2,000 mm of annual rainfall in the wetter premontane zone. Fire shapes the landscape here: the Caribbean pine depends on periodic low-intensity wildfires to regenerate, and the savannas are the stronghold of the endangered yellow-headed Amazon parrot, now largely restricted to this region and adjacent parts of Mexico and Guatemala. For gardeners, several ornamental natives belong to this flora, including the calabash tree (Crescentia), nanche (Byrsonima crassifolia), and the everglades palm (Acoelorraphe).

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

RESOLVE 566 - Neotropic

Campos Rupestres montane savanna

The Campos Rupestres montane savanna is a high-elevation Brazilian ecoregion concentrated along the ancient Espinhaço Range, stretching from northern Bahia south through Minas Gerais, with scattered enclaves in the Chapada Diamantina, Serra da Canastra, and Serra do Caparaó. Known locally as "rock fields" (campo rupestre), it is a discontinuous mosaic of grasslands, shrublands, and quartzite rocky outcrops that threads through the Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, and Caatinga biomes, with vegetation dominated by the families Velloziaceae, Eriocaulaceae, Cyperaceae, and Poaceae. The climate brings dry winters and wet summers paired with strong winds and intense solar irradiance, and plants here grow on nutrient-poor, extremely shallow and acidic soils, adapting with waxy leaf coatings, protective hairs, and fire-resistant rolled leaves. It is an exceptional center of plant endemism-roughly 30 percent of its flora is found nowhere else, and within the Velloziaceae and Eriocaulaceae about 70 percent of species are endemic-yet it remains a threatened ecoregion, with only about 26 percent under protection against mining, eucalyptus plantations, and plant extraction. For gardeners, its rocky outcrops are a natural home to orchids and bromeliads adapted to lean, fast-draining substrates.

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

RESOLVE 567 - Neotropic

Cerrado

The Cerrado is the largest and biologically richest savanna in South America, covering central Brazil and reaching into northeastern Paraguay and eastern Bolivia across plateaus generally between 500 and 1,700 meters in elevation. Rather than uniform grassland, it forms a shifting mosaic that grades from open campo through wooded savanna to the tall, nearly closed woodland known as cerradao, growing on nutrient-poor, well-drained soils and threaded with gallery forests; characteristic woody plants include the pequi tree, Qualea grandiflora, and the trumpet tree Tabebuia ochracea. Its climate is tropical and strongly seasonal, with a pronounced dry season during the southern winter, average annual rainfall of roughly 1,250 to 2,000 millimeters, and mean temperatures around 20 to 26 degrees Celsius. The region is extraordinarily diverse, holding on the order of 10,400 vascular plant species with endemism reaching about 50 percent among plants, and the maned wolf serves as its flagship animal. Much of the Cerrado has been converted to farmland, and the expansion of agribusiness, especially soybean cultivation, remains the primary threat to its native vegetation. For gardeners, the native Tabebuia trumpet trees are among the genera from this ecoregion already valued as flowering ornamentals.

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

RESOLVE 568 - Neotropic

Clipperton Island shrub and grasslands

The Clipperton Island shrub and grasslands ecoregion is confined to a single tiny coral atoll administered by France, lying in the eastern Pacific roughly 965 kilometers southwest of mainland Mexico and recognized as the only coral island in that ocean. Its vegetation is sparse and low, dominated by spiny grass and thickets together with creeping morning glories (Ipomoea) and scattered groves of coconut palm, the cover often standing barely 30 centimeters high after land crabs repeatedly reset the plant community. The climate is tropical, with average temperatures between about 20 and 32 degrees Celsius and frequent tropical storms passing the island. Despite its bleak greenery, the atoll teems with life, supporting thousands of breeding seabirds, including the world's largest masked booby colony, alongside millions of the bright-orange Clipperton land crab that gives the ecoregion its flagship species. The atoll currently has no formal legal protection, leaving this isolated ecosystem reliant on its sheer remoteness.

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

RESOLVE 569 - Neotropic

Dry Chaco

The Dry Chaco is a vast semi-arid lowland in the heart of South America, spanning northwestern Argentina, western Paraguay, and southeastern Bolivia (extending into a small part of Brazil), east of the Andes. Its landscape is a mosaic of savanna and thorn forest, signatured by quebracho hardwoods-red quebracho (Schinopsis lorentzii) and white quebracho (Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco)-alongside the slow-growing palo santo (Bulnesia sarmientoi), prickly-pear and giant columnar cacti, and an understory of bromeliads. Lying in the rain shadow of the central Andes, it endures intense sun, a long dry season, and some of the highest temperatures on the continent, with rainfall roughly around 865 mm a year. The ecoregion is a stronghold of arid-land endemism-home to the once-thought-extinct Chacoan peccary and numerous armadillo species-but it is under heavy pressure, having lost an estimated 20.2% of its forest cover between 2000 and 2019 to ranching and cropland. For gardeners in hot, dry climates, the native algarrobo (Prosopis alba) is a prized shade tree well suited to such conditions.

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

RESOLVE 570 - Neotropic

Guianan savanna

The Guianan savanna spans the southern reaches of Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname and the north of Brazil, covering rolling upland plains on the Guiana Shield between the Amazon and Orinoco basins and including the celebrated Gran Sabana. It is a mosaic of open grasslands and scrubby vegetation studded with isolated forest patches and gallery forests that thread along streams, with savanna grasses such as Trachypogon, Andropogon, and Axonopus, palm-dotted stretches of moriche palm (Mauritia flexuosa), and scrub genera including Clusia, Calliandra, and Chamaecrista. The climate is warm and tropical, with average temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius and annual rainfall generally between 2,000 and 3,000 millimeters. Despite their limited extent, these savannas are a plant-diversity hotspot: in Suriname the savanna patches cover only about one percent of the land yet hold some 800 plant species, roughly a fifth of the country's flora, and the ecoregion's flagship species is the critically endangered Rio Branco antbird. For gardeners, the region is the native home of ornamental genera such as the showy-flowered Calliandra and the stately moriche palm.

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & 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

Bolivia

Educator packet

Region packet

Beni savanna educator packet

Realm

Neotropic

Dominant biome

Tropical & Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas & Shrublands

Approximate area

48,669 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.). Beni savanna (Beni savanna). Retrieved 2026, October 9, from https://plotwright.com/regions/resolve-565

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