The Laurisilva is a type of subtropical forest wet which one finds on several of the islands of the Macaronésie: the Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries. It presents deep grounds and is characteristic of the septentrional slopes subjected to the fogs of the trade winds, with precipitations of about 500 to 1.100 mm and an annual temperature between 15 and 19 °C.
These forests are composed of bay-trees with sheets Pérenne S, being able to reach up to 40 meters height. Good number of the species are endemic, and shelter a rich person biotope of plants of underwood, of Invertébré S, Oiseaux and Chauve-souris, of which some are also endemic.
Origin
The Laurisilva covered in the beginning most of the Azores and of Madeira, like parts of the Western islands of the Canaries, but the forests were seriously reduced by the cut, grubbing for agriculture and the pasture, as well as the invasion of exotic species. The most extended forests of laurisilva are always in Madeira, where one finds them between 300 and 1300 meters of altitude, and where they cover 149,5 km ², is approximately 16% of the surface of the island. With the Canaries, approximately 60 km ² of laurisilva still exist with Tenerife and more 20 km ² in the National park of Garajonay to Will gum It. In the Azores, small extents of forests of laurisilva remain on the islands of Pico, Terceira, and São Miguel.
Composition and structure
The forests of laurisilva of Macaronésie are Reliques of a type of vegetation which covered in the beginning the majority of the basin of the the Mediterranean when the climate of the area was wetter. At the time of the draining of the basin of the Mediterranean during the Pliocène, the forests of bay-trees moved back gradually, replaced by species more resistant to the dryness (Sclérophylle S). The last forests of laurisilva on the circumference of the Mediterranean would have disappeared approximately 10.000 years ago, at the end of the Pléistocène, when the basin of the Mediterranean was heated and drained, although some remainders of the flora of these forests still persist in the mountains of the south of the Spain and the north of the Morocco. The site of the islands of Macaronésie in the North Atlantic attenuated these climatic fluctuations, and maintained the climate relatively wet and soft which made it possible these forests to persist until our days.
The prevalent Lauracées include Til (Ocotea foetens) , the bay-tree ( Laurus canariensis in the Canaries and Laurus azorica in Madeira), Vinhático/Viñatigo (Persea indica) , and Barbosano/Barbuzano (Apollonia barbujana) ; other important trees include Aderno (Heberdenia excelsa) , Pau Branco/Paloblanco (Picconia excelsa) , Mocanos/Mocán (Visnea will mocanera and Pittosporum coriaceum) , Sanguinho (Rhamnus glandulosa) , and the shrubs Folhado (Clethra arborea) and wild Perado/Oranger (Ilex perado) . The forests shelter an underwood rich in herbaceous ferns and, such Leitugas (Sonchus spp.) , Géranium S (Geranium maderense, G. palmatum and G. rubescens) , Estreleiras (Argyranthemum spp.) and the endemic Orchidée Goodyera macrophylla .
Others
The forest of laurisilva of Gomera was declared inheritance of humanity by UNESCO in 1986 and that of Madeira in 1999.
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