Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

's native flora reflects its varied climatic zones, which range from arid and semi-arid to temperate and tropical. For further details of habitats, see Ecoregions of Pakistan,

Forestry in Pakistan The forestry sector of Pakistan is a main source of lumber, paper, fuelwood, latex, medicine as well as food and provide ecotourism and wildlife conservation purposes. 4.91% of Pakistan's land is covered in forest.The Shangla district is the only ...

and Wildlife of Pakistan.

Distribution

Northern highlands and valleys

Pakistan has conifer forests in most of the northern and north-western highlands. These occur from 1,000 to 4,000 m altitudes.

Swat In the United States, a SWAT team (special weapons and tactics, originally special weapons assault team) is a police tactical unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. Although they were first created in the 1960s to ...

, Upper Dir,

Lower Dir Lower Dir District ( ps, لر / کوز دير ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Timergara city is the district headquarter and largest city. The district was formed in 1996, when Dir District was di ...

, Malakand,

Mansehra Mansehra is a city in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan and the headquarters of Mansehra District. It is the 71st largest city of Pakistan and 7th largest city in the province. The name of the city (written in Hindko, Urdu and Gojr ...

and

Abbottabad Abbottabad (; Urdu, Punjabi language(HINDKO dialect) آباد, translit=aibṭabād, ) is the capital city of Abbottabad District in the Hazara region of eastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is the 40th largest city in Pakistan and fourt ...

districts of

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ps, خېبر پښتونخوا; Urdu, Hindko: خیبر پختونخوا) commonly abbreviated as KP or KPK, is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the northwestern region of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ...

(formerly North-West Frontier Province) are the main areas covered with coniferous forests. Pindrow fir ('' Abies pindrow'') and Morinda spruce ('' Picea smithiana'') occupy the highest altitudes, deodar ('' Cedrus deodara'') and blue pine ('' Pinus wallichiana''), the intermediate heights, and chir pine ('' Pinus roxburghii''), occupy the lower areas.

Eastern plains and deserts

In most of

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi Language, Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also Romanization, romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the I ...

and

Sindh Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...

, the Indus plains have many

fluvial In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluviog ...

landforms that support various natural biomes including tropical and subtropical dry and moist broadleaf forestry as well as

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

and xeric shrublands (deserts of Thal in Punjab, Tharparkar in Sindh) and kair (''

Capparis aphylla ''Capparis decidua'', commonly known as karira, is a useful plant in its marginal habitat. Description It is a small much-branched tree or shrub. It bears a mass of slender, gray-green leafless branches, the small caducous leaves being found ...

'') which provide firewood. The riparian woodlands grow in narrow belts along the banks of

River Indus The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmi ...

and its tributaries. Main tree varieties are of sheesham and babul and main shrub varieties are

reed bed A reedbed or reed bed is a natural habitat found in floodplains, waterlogged depressions and estuaries. Reedbeds are part of a succession from young reeds colonising open water or wet ground through a gradation of increasingly dry ground. As ...

s and tamarisk ('' Tamarax dioica'') bushes.

Wetlands and coastal regions

In the south of Sindh are

Indus River Delta The Indus River Delta ( ur, سندھ ڈیلٹا, sd, سنڌو ٽِڪور), forms where the Indus River flows into the Arabian Sea, mostly in the southern Sindh province of Pakistan with a small portion in the Kutch Region of India. The delta ...

in west and Great Rann of Kutch in east. The largest saltwater wetland in Pakistan is the Indus River Delta. Unlike many other river deltas, it consists of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay pa ...

soil and is very swampy. The Great Rann of Kutch below the

Thar Desert The Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert, is an arid region in the north-western part of the Subcontinent that covers an area of and forms a natural boundary between India and Pakistan. It is the world's 20th-largest desert, ...

is not as swampy and exhibits shrubland vegetation of rather dry thorny shrubs as well as marsh grasses of ''

Apluda ''Apluda'' is a genus of plants in the grass family native to Asia and to various islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The only known species is ''Apluda mutica'', native to Central Asia, China (incl. Taiwan + Tibet), Japan (incl Ryu ...

'' and ''

Cenchrus ''Cenchrus'' is a widespread genus of plants in the grass family. Its species are native to many countries in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, and various oceanic islands. Common names include buffelgrasses, sandburs, and sand spur “st ...

''. Other saltwater wetlands are located on the coast of Balochistan such as at Sonmiani and

Jiwani Jiwani (Urdu, bal, ) is a town and commercial port that is located along the Gulf of Oman in the Gwadar District of the Balochistan province in Pakistan. The town is also next to the Iran-Pakistan border. The town has a total population of 25,00 ...

. These and Indus River Delta support

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

forestry, mainly of species ''

Avicennia marina ''Avicennia marina'', commonly known as grey mangrove or white mangrove, is a species of mangrove tree classified in the plant family Acanthaceae (formerly in the Verbenaceae or Avicenniaceae). As with other mangroves, it occurs in the inte ...

''.

External links

Missouri Botanical Garden - Inventory of the Plants of Pakistanefloras.org - Flora of PakistanLahore Gardening Blog - Encyclopaedia of flowersPakistan Plant Database (PPD)PARC Databases
by '' Pakistan Agricultural Research Council'' {{Geography of Pakistan

Distribution

Northern highlands and valleys

Eastern plains and deserts

Wetlands and coastal regions

See also

External links