See also: Garrigues

The scrubland indicates a vegetable Formation low more or less impenetrable, made up mainly of Arbrisseau X resistant to the dryness, formant of the thorny thickets. This formation is resulting from the degradation of the forest of holm oaks and white by the tooth of the sheep, the axe of the man and fire lasting more than 5000 years and characteristic of the areas the Mediterranean born.

The scrubland is with limestone what the maquis is with the siliceous grounds.

The scrubland term comes from the root pre-indoeuropéenne kar, gar, kal, Gall, who means “stone” or “rock”; by extension “stone shelter, house, fortress, village”; it gave guarric in Celte, garric in Occitan, “the tree of the rock”, term which indicates the Kermes oak. The words Gard, Carcassonne, Karst, Creek, Country cottage, Rabbit burrow, Crau, Serious, Garoupe derive from it.

Localization

This formation, which is established in the solid masses limestones in dry and filter ground, in general results from the degradation of the Forêt of holm oaks, which passes gradually to settlements of pines of Alep, then with the scrubland.

In France, it occupies approximately 400.000 hectares, mainly in Provence and in the Languedoc.

History

The scrubland was not always this arid “desert” delivered to the walkers whom we see. Formerly it was the place of an important activity.

Without speaking about the many prehistoric and medieval vestiges (Megalith strong S, castles, caves strengthened by the Camisards, hermitages…), of the herds of goats or sheep fed there, of the glassmakers supplied their furnaces with his wood as of the Middle Ages, of the bouscatiers crossed there then burned wood to deliver the cities out of coal, of the lime-burners built there their furnaces with furnaces with lime close to the most timbered zones, of the ruscaïres (barkers) there took several types of barks bound for the tanners, of the whole teams of pick-ups collected there the wild Lavande, the aspic , and brought back it to distill it, a crowd of small holders cleared one arpent there to plant olive-trees there or of the Vine, épierrait it and built there terraces and these huts out of dry stone which one calls commonly (especially in the Gard) Capitelle S …

All this old activity has periclity with the advent of the Industrial revolution then the Rural migration. The clearing by the man and the herds gradually ceased, the vegetation regaining the ground of many ways were closed again and the majority of dry stone constructions disappear now with the glances…

Scrubland seen by the writers

“ With the bridge Saint Nicolas's Day (the road) crossed the Gardon; it was Palestine, the Judaea. The bouquets of cistuses crimsons or white chamaraient the raucous scrubland, that the lavenders embaumaient. It blew by on top an air dry, laughing, which cleaned the road by vacuum-cleaning the surrounding. (…) With the accesses of Gardon grew Asphodèle S and, in the bed even of the river, almost everywhere dry, a quasi tropical flora ”. André Gide, If the grain does not die .

Plant species