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Quarter degree square: 1033A2 Country: Malawi Habitat: Montane grassland, montane evergreen forest. Altitude range: 1850 - 1940 m Annual rainfall: Location (short): Montane grassland plateau with patches of forest South of the Mafinga Mts stretching acrross the border with Zambia Location (detailed): |
Copied from Dowsett-Lemaire in Bull. Jard. Bot. Nat. Belg. 59(1/2): 37-38 (1989):
The Jembya Plateau, 12-18 km SE of the southern Mafinga range, is a small, flat area of montane grassland and forest patches that lies across the Zambia-Malawi border at an altitude of 1850-1940 m. It was referred to as < Pirewombe Hill > in Chapman & White (1970: 122), though that locality is in fact further west in Zambia. R.K. Brummitt visited the forest in 1970 and recorded (pers. comm.) one tree and a few shrubs; it had otherwise never been explored by a biologist.
The main forest patch measures 133 ha and has a gradient of only 60 m over 2 km. It has a fairly closed canopy at 25-30 m, and the more conspicuous large trees are Chrysophyllum gorungosanum, Croton megalocarpus, Entandrophragma excelsum (emerging), Macaranga capensis and Polyscias fulva. The Croton are majestic trees with a broad, parasol-shaped crown; an addition to the Malawi flora at the time, this species seems confined to Jembya
and nearby Musisi. The undergrowth is not very dense, with local exceptions such as the gregarious Rinorea myrsinifolia. One of the more numerous lianas is a Hippocratea (apparently H. goetzei) with rather small leaves. Despite the permanent stream, there are no tree ferns and the herbaceous fern flora is very poor, probably as a result of the lack of sheltered situations in this flat forest.
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