Page:Maury's New Elements of Geography, 1907.djvu/23

 Plants cannot grow without heat and moisture. Different plants belong to different zones.

In the Frigid zones the winters are long and very cold with little light. Hardly anything grows here except mosses and a few low-growing plants that flourish during the short summer. The Frigid zones may be called the treeless belts.

Let us leave them and visit the Temperate zones. Here we shall find more heat, and more light, and plenty of rain and dew. And so we find here, too, a great many plants.

In each of the Temperate zones that part near the frigid is still very cold, and we call it the cold belt. Fir trees and oats grow here. In the middle belt of the Temperate zones we find the really temperate climate. Wheat, corn, and cotton grow in the fields. There are forests of oak, maple, and pine, and orchards of pear, apple, and peach trees. Nearer the Torrid zone the climate is very warm, and we call this the warm belt of the Temperate zones. Here rice is the principal grain, and the tea-plant, sugar-cane, and orange trees grow.



In the Torrid zone there are more heat and more rain than anywhere else. So here we find the greatest number of plants. There are forests of India rubber trees, groves of palms and jungles of bamboos. The delicious banana and pineapple are among the fruits of this zone. In it the coffee-plant and sugar-cane have their home, and the largest and most beautiful flowers grow. The different plants of a country make up what we call its vegetation.