In the maritime areas of the Asiatic Mediterranean—Anatolia and the Levant—xerophytic vegetation (vegetation structurally adapted to exist with very little water) of the Mediterranean scrub-woodland types, known as maquis (evergreen), shiblyak (deciduous), and frigana (low-growing thorny, cushionlike bushes), is prevalent. The predominant soils under such vegetation are brown; they have accumulated iron as a result of the intense chemical weathering during the wet Mediterranean winter and of the upward flow of soil solutions during the dry summer. Frigana vegetation is widely represented in the West Asian semidesert highlands. Here soils have developed that are transitional between the brown soils and ...(100 of 38030 words)