Garrigue or garigue ( ), also known as phrygana ( el, φρύγανα ,
n. pl.), is a type of low
scrubland ecoregion and
plant community
A plant community is a collection or association of plant species within a designated geographical unit, which forms a relatively uniform patch, distinguishable from neighboring patches of different vegetation types. The components of each plant ...
in the
Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub
Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in ...
biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
.
It is found on
limestone soils in
southern France and around the
Mediterranean Basin, generally near the seacoast where the moderated
Mediterranean climate provides annual summer
drought. It is an anthropogenic
degradation
Degradation may refer to:
Science
* Degradation (geology), lowering of a fluvial surface by erosion
* Degradation (telecommunications), of an electronic signal
* Biodegradation of organic substances by living organisms
* Environmental degradation ...
and
succession
Succession is the act or process of following in order or sequence.
Governance and politics
*Order of succession, in politics, the ascension to power by one ruler, official, or monarch after the death, resignation, or removal from office of ...
form of former
evergreen oak forests that existed until 4500 years BC.
The term has also found its way into
haute cuisine
''Haute cuisine'' (; ) or ''grande cuisine'' is the cuisine of "high-level" establishments, gourmet restaurants, and luxury hotels. ''Haute cuisine'' is characterized by the meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food at a high pric ...
, suggestive of the resinous flavours of a garrigue
shrubland.
Habitat and vegetation
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre described garrigue as "discontinuous bushy associations of the Mediterranean
calcareous
Calcareous () is an adjective meaning "mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate", in other words, containing lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of scientific disciplines.
In zoology
''Calcareous'' is used as an adje ...
plateaus, which have relatively
alkaline soil
Alkali, or Alkaline, soils are clay soils with high pH (greater than 8.5), a poor soil structure and a low infiltration capacity. Often they have a hard calcareous layer at 0.5 to 1 metre depth. Alkali soils owe their unfavorable physico ...
s. It is often composed of
kermes oak
''Quercus coccifera'', the kermes oak, is an oak bush in the ''Ilex'' section of the genus. It is native to the Mediterranean region and Northern African Maghreb, south to north from Morocco to France and west to east from Portugal to Cyprus a ...
,
lavender,
thyme, and white
cistus. There may be a few isolated trees."
Garrigue is discontinuous with widely spaced bush associations with open spaces, and is often extensive. It is associated with limestone and base rich soils, and calcium associated plants.
Aside from dense thickets of kermes oak that punctuate the garrigue landscape,
juniper
Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' () of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from the Arcti ...
and stunted
holly oak
''Quercus ilex'', the evergreen oak, holly oak or holm oak is a large evergreen oak native to the Mediterranean region. It is a member of the ''Ilex'' section of the genus, with acorns that mature in a single summer.
Description
An evergreen tr ...
s and
holm oaks are the typical trees; aromatic lime-tolerant shrubs such as
lavender,
sage,
rosemary
''Salvia rosmarinus'' (), commonly known as rosemary, is a shrub with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves and white, pink, purple, or blue flowers, native plant, native to the Mediterranean Region, Mediterranean region. Until 2017, it was kn ...
,
wild thyme
''Thymus serpyllum'', known by the common names of Breckland thyme, Breckland wild thyme, wild thyme, creeping thyme, or elfin thyme, is a species of flowering plant in the mint family Lamiaceae, native to most of Europe and North Africa. It is ...
and ''
Artemisia'' are common garrigue plants.
Allelopathy
The aromatic oils and soluble
monoterpene
Monoterpenes are a class of terpenes that consist of two isoprene units and have the molecular formula C10H16. Monoterpenes may be linear (acyclic) or contain rings (monocyclic and bicyclic). Modified terpenes, such as those containing oxygen funct ...
s of such herbs leached into garrigue soils from
leaf litter
Plant litter (also leaf litter, tree litter, soil litter, litterfall or duff) is dead plant material (such as leaves, bark, needles, twigs, and cladodes) that have fallen to the ground. This detritus or dead organic material and its constituent ...
have been connected with plant
allelopathy
Allelopathy is a biological phenomenon by which an organism produces one or more biochemicals that influence the germination, growth, survival, and reproduction of other organisms. These biochemicals are known as allelochemicals and can have ben ...
, which asserts the dominance of a plant over its neighbors, especially
annuals, and contributes to the characteristic open spacing and restricted
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or ''skin flora''.
...
in a garrigue. The fines (charred wood and smoke residues, or
charcoal
Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...
dust) of periodic brush fires also have had an effect on the patterning and composition of the garrigues. Clear summer skies and intense
solar radiation
Solar irradiance is the power per unit area (surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument.
Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre (W/ ...
have induced the evolution of protective physiologies: the familiar glaucous, grayish-green of garrigue landscapes is produced by the protective white hairs and light-diffusing, pebbled surfaces of many leaves typical of garrigue plants.
Similar ecoregions
''Garrigue'' is a common general word for the shrubland
habitat ecosystems in southern France along with
maquis, which are known elsewhere in the
Mediterranean region as
matorral and ''tomillares'' in Spain,
macchia in Italy, ''phrygana'' in Greece, ''garig'' in Croatia, and ''batha'' in Israel.
In
California a similar Mediterranean climate
ecoregion is named
chaparral
Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean ...
; in
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
it is named the
matorral; in
South Africa it is named
fynbos; and in
Australia it is named
mallee. All are in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
Maquis
Both garrigue and maquis are associated with the
Mediterranean climate within the
Mediterranean region. However, the distinction is not clear and term use is inconsistent.
Maquis shrubland is broadly similar to garrigue, but the vegetation is denser, being composed of numerous closely spaced shrubs. Maquis is associated with siliceous (acid) soils, unlike the relatively alkaline
calcareous
Calcareous () is an adjective meaning "mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate", in other words, containing lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of scientific disciplines.
In zoology
''Calcareous'' is used as an adje ...
soils of the garrigue. Its plant communities are often suites associated with
holm oak.
Calcifuges
A calcifuge is a plant that does not tolerate alkaline (basic) soil. The word is derived from the Latin 'to flee from chalk'. These plants are also described as ericaceous, as the prototypical calcifuge is the genus ''Erica'' (heaths). It is not ...
such as ''
Erica
Erica or ERICA may refer to:
* Erica (given name)
* ''Erica'' (plant), a flowering plant genus
* Erica (chatbot), a service of Bank of America
* ''Erica'' (video game), a 2019 FMV video game
* ''Erica'' (spider), a jumping spider genus
* Eric ...
'' and ''
Calluna
''Calluna vulgaris'', common heather, ling, or simply heather, is the sole species in the genus ''Calluna'' in the flowering plant family Ericaceae. It is a low-growing evergreen shrub growing to tall, or rarely to and taller, and is found wide ...
'' are present in the maquis
ecoregion.
Conservation
Deforestation of the indigenous oak forest since the
Late Bronze Age, for cultivation of
olives,
vines and grain, the introduction of sheep and especially goats and charcoal-making for heat and iron-working, exposed the land surface to weathering and resulted in
erosion of the topsoil. The wild garrigue, then, is a man-formed landscape. The intensity of grazing pressure has had a direct response in the
ecotope
Ecotopes are the smallest ecologically distinct landscape features in a landscape mapping and classification system. As such, they represent relatively homogeneous, spatially explicit landscape functional units that are useful for stratifying land ...
, reflected today in the decline of goat-pasturing.
Origin of the word
First cited in
French in 1546, the singular word ''garrigue'' is borrowed from the
Provençal dialect
Provençal (, , ; french: provençal , ; oc, provençau or ) is a Romance language, either considered as a variety of Occitan or a separate language, spoken by people in Provence and parts of Drôme. Historically, the term Provençal has bee ...
of
Occitan ''garriga,'' equivalent to
Old French ''jarrie''. The etymologist Oscar Bloch states that it is most likely related to the
Gascon , meaning ''rock'', and to the
Germanic Swiss ''Karren'', meaning a kind of
sedimentary rock. The related words could stem from a supposed ''carra'' ("rock"), which could be a remnant of a
Pre-Latin language to judge from its geographic distribution even before Celtic times and is possibly akin to the
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
''*karr-'', ''harri'' ("rock"). It is thought that Gallic and Latin incorporated those words and then transmitted them in various forms to the
Romance languages.
Uses
Cultivation
The dense, thrifty growth of garrigue flora has recommended many of its shrubs and
sub-shrubs for uses as
ornamental plants in traditional and
drought tolerant gardens. Many shrubs and flowering perennials of the garrigue are mainstays of the English "mixed border" of herbaceous and
woody plant
A woody plant is a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue and thus has a hard stem. In cold climates, woody plants further survive winter or dry season above ground, as opposite to herbaceous plants that die back to the ground until ...
s found in
English gardens, and around the world, though often grown under cooler, moister conditions.
Some have become
invasive species in the
Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub
Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in ...
biome's other ecoregions beyond the Mediterranean Basin on other continents, including the
California chaparral and woodlands
The California chaparral and woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion of southwestern Oregon, northern, central, and southern California (United States) and northwestern Baja California (Mexico), located on the west coast of North America. It is a ...
.
Viticulture
Grapes that are grown in the ''garrigues'' region of France are said to produce
wines
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are ma ...
with a "barnyard" or "earthy" tone, or "the herbal scent of lavender that fills the hills of Provence in the summer time." Some wines bottled in
Southern France contain the word ''garrigues'' as part of their
appellation or
label name.
[Stéphane Batigne, ''Arnavielle, une famille des garrigues'', Mille et une vies, 2008 ]
See also
*
Maquis shrubland - (''ecoregion'')
*
biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
References
External links
*
*
*
{{wines
*
Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub
Ecoregions of Metropolitan France
Ecoregions of Europe
Environment of the Mediterranean
Flora of the Mediterranean Basin