Schlerophyll is a word that I’ve come across a lot living in Australia. This is without any real explanation, other than either wet or dry put in front of it. The word schlerophyll is composed of two Greek words, scleros meaning hard and phyllon meaning leaf. This does make a lot of sense if you have seen any plants from plants described in such a way. Any plants or vegetation types described using the word schlerophyll are woody and evergreen with leaves that are thick and leathery to enable a plant to reduce water lost through its leaves.

This sort of vegetation is found many places around the world, including Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and South Africa (along with others). Here in Australia, there is dry and wet schlerophyll vegetation types.

I’ll start with dry schlerophyll. Apparently, a quarter of all the vegetation classes that have been mapped within the state of New South Wales (where Sydney is in the south east of Australia) are of this type of vegetation. Common genera within these forests are Eucalyptus, Acacia and Banksia, all with hard and short leaves-a feature often associated with poor soil fertility and not the lack of water/soil moisture-dry schlerophyll forests have between 1000 and more than 1300 millimetres of rain here in NSW. Due to the poor nutrient content of the soil, many plants develop a relationship with nutrient-fixing bacteria to get the nutrients they need, while others have developed special root systems that are more efficient at taking up these nutrients. Fire is an important part of regeneration in these forests-many species have buds in their trunks, seeds of others are protected by a hard seed coat that opens by fire, while the seeds of others germinate on contact with smoke. Composition of the forest is dependent on the fire regime.

Wet schlerophyll forest is dominated by Eucalyptus trees and their closely related trees that reach up to 30 metres tall. Trunks are straighter than other eucalypts-leaves are within the top third of the tree. The understorey is composed of shrubs, small trees or grass and scattered shrubs. Some common species include Eucalyptus saligna (blue gum), Eucalyptus grandis (flooded gum) and Syncarpia glomifera (turpentine). The understory is composed of both shrubs and grass. The exact species depends on the climate and topography. These forests also occur in high rainfall areas.

https://www.qld.gov.au/environment. Accessed 22/1/25

Https://threatenedspecies.bionet.nsw.gov.au. Accessed 22/12/24

All photos my own.