ABSTRACT
In the foregoing chapters only passing reference has been made to tropical savanna; indeed much emphasis has been laid upon the fact that grasses are rare or absent in many types of community ranging from the tropical rain forest to the desert. This may appear very strange in view of the fact that vast areas of savanna do exist in the tropics. The term 'savanna' probably had its origin in Central America as a Carib word for marshes, scrublands or any area not covered with forest [59]. It is now used throughout the tropics but its sense has been narrowed to apply to plant communities in which grasses (Graminae) and sedges (Cyperaceae) are important. Even so it has been used to refer to a great range of communities from unbroken, treeless grassland to woodland in which trees and shrubs form an almost continuous cover but where there is a continuous grassy undergrowth. It is probably not without significance that there are all gradations from completely herbaceous communities to those in which a forest cover is interrupted by no more than the occasional opening of the canopy.
