Abstract
The cold tropics (Sect. 1.2) comprise the “regions within the tropics occurring between the upper limit of continuous, closed-canopy forest (often around 3500–3900 m) and the upper limit of plant life (often around 4600–4900 m)”. In this way Rundel et al. (1994a) define “tropical alpine environments” in their recent book. They use “alpine” as a more general term in an attempt to avoid regional terms like páramo and jalca for the moist Andes and puna for the drier Andes in South America and afro-alpine and moorland in Africa. However, “alpine” is also a regional term applying to environments outside the tropics. On the other hand, since the conditions and the physiognomy of vegetation are similar on tropical mountains in different continents, especially in Africa and South America, we might as well choose the term páramo. Increasingly, this is used as the general term to describe vegetation in the cold tropics extending from somewhat above 3000 m to nearly 5000 m above sea level (Fig. 9.1).
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Lüttge, U. (1997). Páramos. In: Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03340-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03340-1_9
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