The Cerrado is a mosaic of vegetation types ranging from open grasslands
(campo limpo) through sparse tree cover (cerrado sensu stricto)
and dry semi-open canopy (cerradão) to the gallery forests
(evergreen closed canopy tall forest), along the edges of watercourses,
and to mesophitic forests (semideciduous closed canopy forest), associated to
calcareous soils.
The trees and brushes of the Cerrado have an appearance, we use to associate with a
vegetation, that grows in an environment were water is rare.
But water is not the limiting factor of the Cerrado
(different from the Caatinga).
Even in the dry season, from 2 m depth on the earth contains sufficient humidity.
The problem of the Cerrado is the lack of nutrients in the soil, the excessive acidity
and the large quantity of aluminum, a toxic substance for most of the plants.
In contrast with the exuberance and mystery of the
Atlantic Rainforest,
all those factors give the plants an xeromporphic appearance: thick and rough bark,
twisted trunks and leaves which are usually broad and rigid.
Many herbaceous plants have subterranean organs to store water and nutrients.
The climate, with a wet warm season from October to April and a cooler dry season
from May to September, favors the occurrence of periodic natural and man-made wildfires.
Thick barks and subterranean structures can be interpreted as some of the many
adaptations of this vegetation to the periodic burnings to which it is submitted,
in order protect the plants from destruction and making them capable of sprouting
again after the fire. Taking advantage of the sprouting of the herbaceous stratum
that follows a burning in the "cerrado", the primitive inhabitants of these regions
have learned to use the fire as a tool, to increase the fodder offer to their
domesticated animals (herbivorous), a fact that happens until today.
