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Natural vegetation types

Soils and natural vegetation of India · Part 3 / 4 · Fact-checked on 8 November 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

What natural vegetation is and what controls it; tropical evergreen and semi-evergreen forests; moist and dry deciduous forests; thorn forests and scrub; the altitudinal belts of the Himalaya, alpine meadows and the sholas of the southern hills; littoral and mangrove forests.

Parts 1 and 2 described the soils of India. This part looks at what grows on them when people leave the land alone. natural vegetation means the plant cover that has grown up by itself, without being planted, and has stayed largely undisturbed for a long time; crops, orchards and plantations are not part of it. India's vegetation ranges from dripping rainforest on the Western Ghats to thorny scrub in Rajasthan, mangroves on tidal mud and grassy meadows near the Himalayan snow line. Foresters group this variety in a standard scheme: H.G. Champion and S.K. Seth's revised survey of 1968 sorted India's forests into 16 major type groups, and the Forest Survey of India still maps forests by it. For Prelims the broad types are enough, and this part takes them one by one, from the wettest to the driest, then up the mountains and down to the coast.

Why does vegetation change so much across one country? The main control is rainfall: the amount of rain and the length of the dry season decide whether trees can keep their leaves all year, must shed them, or can hardly grow at all. This is why India's forest belts follow its monsoon rainfall map so closely. Temperature comes next; it falls with height, so a mountain climb of a few thousand metres passes through belts of vegetation much like a journey from the tropics towards the poles. Relief matters in other ways too: windward slopes catch orographic rainfall while the rain-shadow side stays dry, and steep slopes hold thin soil. Soil itself sorts plants: sand favours drought-hardy shrubs, waterlogged ground favours swamp plants and salty tidal mud allows only specialists such as mangroves. Day length and long human use, through grazing, fire and clearing, also shape what survives.

tropical evergreen forest grows where rainfall is above about 200 cm a year and the dry season is short or absent, with warm temperatures throughout. In India it occupies the western, windward slopes of the Western Ghats, the hills of the north-east and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Because water is never scarce, the trees have no common season for shedding leaves; each sheds and renews at its own time, so the forest looks green all year. The stand is crowded and layered: tall trees rising to 60 m or more form the top canopy, with shorter trees, shrubs, climbers and epiphytes below and very little light reaching the floor. Typical trees include ebony, mahogany and rosewood. The timber is hard and heavy, but the mixing of many species in a small area makes large-scale logging difficult. These forests hold much of India's plant and animal diversity, which is why the Western Ghats and the north-east are counted as biodiversity hotspot regions.

Semi-evergreen forests form a transition belt. They occur on the less rainy edges of the evergreen zone, in the same three regions: the lower slopes and drier fringes of the Western Ghats, parts of the north-east and the Andaman Islands. Here a short but definite dry season lets deciduous trees mix with the evergreen ones, so the forest is still dense but some trees stand bare for a few weeks. White cedar, hollock and kail are among the trees named for this type. The semi-evergreen belt matters for two reasons. First, it shows that forest types do not have sharp borders; one type grades into the next as rainfall drops. Second, because these forests are easier to reach than the deep rainforest, they have long been cleared for plantations of tea, coffee, rubber and spices, and much of the original cover in Kerala, Karnataka and Assam has been replaced in this way.

tropical deciduous forest, also called monsoon forest, is the most widespread forest type in India. Its trees shed their leaves for some weeks in the dry season, usually in spring and early summer, to save water, and leaf out again before or with the rains. Foresters split it by rainfall. Moist deciduous forest grows where rainfall is roughly 100 to 200 cm: along the foothills of the Himalaya and in the north-east, on the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats, and across Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Sal and teak are its two great timber trees. Sal dominates the forests of central and eastern India and the Himalayan foothills, while teak is the leading tree of the Peninsula. Shisham, mahua, amla, semul, kusum and sandalwood also grow in this belt. Because the forest is less crowded than the rainforest and often dominated by one valuable species, it has been the main source of India's commercial timber.

Dry deciduous forest takes over where rainfall falls to roughly 70 to 100 cm. It covers large parts of the peninsular plateau and the plains of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The trees are shorter and more widely spaced, grasses grow between them, and in the long dry season the forest stands leafless and open, which makes it prone to fire. Tendu, palas, amaltas, bel, khair and axlewood are common, and teak grows in the better-watered parts. These forests are valuable less for big timber than for minor forest produce: tendu leaves used to roll bidis, mahua flowers, gum, lac and fodder support millions of forest dwellers, especially tribal communities in central India. Much of this belt has been cleared for farming, and where grazing and fire are heavy it degrades into open scrub. At its dry edge it grades into thorn forest, which the next paragraph takes up.

tropical thorn forest and scrub grow where rainfall is below about 70 cm and highly uncertain. The largest tract lies in north-western India, across western and southern Rajasthan, Gujarat, south-western Punjab and Haryana; smaller patches occur in the rain-shadow interior of the Deccan, in parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh. Every plant here is built to survive drought. Roots go deep or spread wide to catch scarce water; leaves are small, thick or replaced by spines to cut water loss; some stems are fleshy and store water. Acacias such as babool and khair, ber, khejri, wild date palm, euphorbias and neem are typical, with tufts of coarse grass between scattered bushes. The cover is open rather than closed, and heavy grazing, fuelwood cutting and expanding farms have thinned it further. At its driest margin, in the Thar, it fades into near-desert, linking vegetation to the desertification studied in Part 2.

montane forest changes in belts as one climbs, because temperature drops with height while rainfall and slope also change. In the Himalaya the foothills and the Shiwaliks carry tropical moist deciduous forest with sal. Higher up, roughly between 1,000 and 2,000 m, come wet temperate forests of evergreen broad-leaved trees such as oak and chestnut, while the drier slopes of the western Himalaya at similar heights carry chir pine. From about 1,500 to 3,000 m temperate coniferous forest dominates, with deodar, blue pine, silver fir and spruce; deodar is prized for its durable timber. Near 3,000 to 3,600 m the trees thin into alpine forest of silver fir, juniper, birch and rhododendron, often stunted and bent by wind and snow. The heights are approximate and are greater in the wetter eastern Himalaya, where the forests are also richer in species. The whole sequence repeats, on a small vertical scale, the change from tropical to cold lands.

Above the tree line, roughly beyond 3,600 m, trees give way to alpine grasslands and meadows that bloom in the short summer after the snow melts. They are known as bugyals in Uttarakhand and margs in Kashmir, as in the names Gulmarg and Sonamarg, and the Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand is a famous example. Pastoral groups such as the Gujjars and Bakarwals of Jammu and Kashmir, the Gaddis of Himachal Pradesh and the Bhotiyas of Uttarakhand drive their flocks up to these pastures each summer and down in winter, a seasonal movement called transhumance. Higher still, only mosses and lichens survive before bare rock and snow. The southern hills, being in the tropics, have no true alpine zone, but above about 1,500 m in the Nilgiri, Anaimalai and Palani hills the forest takes a special form: the shola, patches of stunted evergreen trees in sheltered folds, set among rolling grassland on the open slopes.

Littoral and swamp forests grow where land and sea meet. Their best-known form is the mangrove: trees and shrubs that tolerate salt water and are flooded and drained by the tides twice a day. To live in airless, salty mud they have special features: stilt roots that prop them up, breathing roots that stick up out of the mud, and in many species seeds that sprout while still on the parent tree. India's largest mangrove forest is the Sundarbans in the delta of the Ganga and Brahmaputra, shared with Bangladesh and named after the sundari tree; it is also home to the Royal Bengal tiger. Other major mangroves fringe the deltas of the east coast, including Bhitarkanika in Odisha, Coringa in the Godavari delta and Pichavaram in Tamil Nadu, and they also occur in the Gulf of Kachchh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Mangroves break the force of storm surges from a tropical cyclone, hold the coast against erosion, shelter young fish and store large amounts of carbon in their mud.

Seen together, India's vegetation is a map of water and height. Moving from the wettest areas to the driest, the forest changes from evergreen to semi-evergreen, then to moist and dry deciduous, and finally to thorn scrub at the edge of the desert. Climbing a mountain produces a second sequence, from deciduous foothills through broad-leaved and coniferous belts to alpine meadows, with the sholas as the southern hills' own version. Along the coast, salt and tides create a third world, the mangroves. Each type has its own value: biodiversity in the evergreen forests, timber and forest produce in the deciduous belt, grazing on the alpine pastures and coastal protection from the mangroves. But much of this cover has been cleared or thinned. How much forest India actually has today, how it is measured, and what law, policy and people's movements have done to protect it is the subject of Part 4.

Exam traps

• Tropical DECIDUOUS (monsoon) forest, not evergreen forest, is the most widespread forest type in India.
• Evergreen forests are not leafless at any time because their trees shed leaves at DIFFERENT times; 'evergreen' does not mean the trees never shed leaves.
• Teak dominates the moist and dry deciduous forests of the PENINSULA; sal dominates central and eastern India and the Himalayan foothills. Questions often swap the two.
• Sholas are in the high SOUTHERN hills (Nilgiri, Anaimalai, Palani); the southern hills have no true alpine zone. Bugyals (Uttarakhand) and margs (Kashmir) are Himalayan alpine meadows.
• Deodar, pine, fir and spruce are TEMPERATE conifers of roughly 1,500–3,000 m in the Himalaya; oak and chestnut are broad-leaved trees of the belt below.
• The Sundarbans are the largest mangrove forest in India and are shared with Bangladesh; Coringa is in the Godavari delta (Andhra Pradesh) and Bhitarkanika in Odisha, not West Bengal.
• Breathing (pneumatophore) roots belong to MANGROVES in waterlogged mud; thorn-forest plants instead have deep roots and small or spiny leaves to survive drought.
• Altitude zones in the Himalaya are approximate and RISE in the wetter east; questions test the order of the belts, not exact heights.

Recap

• Natural vegetation: plant cover that grew by itself and stayed largely undisturbed; Champion and Seth (1968) grouped India's forests into 16 major type groups.
• Controls: rainfall and the length of the dry season above all, then temperature (falling with height), relief, soil and human use.
• Tropical evergreen: over about 200 cm rain; Western Ghats (west slopes), north-east, Andaman and Nicobar; layered, up to 60 m or more; ebony, mahogany, rosewood.
• Semi-evergreen: transition belt on the drier fringes; white cedar, hollock, kail; much cleared for plantations.
• Moist deciduous (about 100–200 cm): sal in central and eastern India and the foothills, teak in the Peninsula; main source of commercial timber.
• Dry deciduous (about 70–100 cm): tendu, palas, amaltas, bel, khair; valued for minor forest produce; prone to fire.
• Thorn forest (below about 70 cm): Rajasthan, Gujarat, rain-shadow Deccan; deep roots, small or spiny leaves; babool, ber, khejri.
• Himalaya: sal foothills, oak and chestnut, then deodar, pine, fir and spruce, then alpine forest and meadows (bugyal, marg); sholas in the high southern hills.
• Mangroves: Sundarbans (largest, shared with Bangladesh), Bhitarkanika, Coringa, Pichavaram, Gulf of Kachchh, Andaman and Nicobar; protect coasts and store carbon.

Practice questions

Sources

• Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change: forest types of India (Champion and Seth classification, 1968) as used in the India State of Forest Report — https://fsi.nic.in
• Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change: forests, mangroves and wetlands of India — https://moef.gov.in
• India Meteorological Department: rainfall climatology of India — https://mausam.imd.gov.in