Which one of the following statements is NOT correct?

Correct — B, Chaparral vegetation is found in Taiga climate. Chaparral belongs to the Mediterranean climate, not the taiga. It is the dense, drought-hardy scrub of California — leathery evergreen leaves, deep roots, plants adapted to burn and regrow — and its counterparts elsewhere carry local names: maquis and garrigue around the Mediterranean Sea, matorral in central Chile, fynbos at the Cape, mallee in southern Australia. Every one of these lies on a west coast between roughly thirty and forty-five degrees of latitude, with rain in winter and drought in summer. The taiga is the opposite kind of place: the subarctic coniferous belt of spruce, fir, pine and larch running across Siberia, Scandinavia and Canada, with long freezing winters and a short cool summer. The three other statements are all correct, which leaves (b) as the answer to a NOT-correct item.

• (a)Mahogany is a timber species of Tropical Rainforest — Correct as stated. Mahogany is a hardwood of the tropical rainforest of Central and South America and the West Indies, prized enough that the trade in it is now regulated.
• (c)Lichens are predominantly found in Tundra region — Correct as stated. Lichens and mosses dominate the tundra because the growing season is too short and the subsoil too frozen for trees; reindeer moss, itself a lichen, is the classic example.
• (d)Sal is a representative species of Moist Deciduous Forest — Correct as stated. Sal, Shorea robusta, is the characteristic tree of India's moist deciduous forests, as teak is of the drier deciduous belt.

Four biomes are named here and each has one signature species attached to it. Tropical rainforest carries mahogany, ebony and rosewood; moist deciduous forest in India carries sal, with teak in the drier variant; tundra carries lichens, mosses and sedges; taiga carries conifers — spruce, fir, pine and larch. Chaparral is the odd term, because it is a vegetation name rather than a climate name, and it belongs to the Mediterranean type in Koppen's Cs group.

The reliable way through a pairing item like this is to place each vegetation type on a latitude band. Rainforest sits on the equator, moist deciduous forest in the monsoon tropics, Mediterranean scrub on west coasts in the thirties, taiga in the high fifties and sixties, and tundra beyond the tree line. Chaparral and taiga are separated by thirty degrees of latitude and by a wholly different rainfall regime, so the pairing in option (b) is not a near miss but a plain mismatch — which is what makes it the intended answer rather than a debatable one.

• Chaparral is the drought-adapted scrub of the Mediterranean climate, best known from California.
• Its regional equivalents are maquis and garrigue, matorral in Chile, fynbos at the Cape and mallee in Australia.
• The taiga is the subarctic coniferous forest of spruce, fir, pine and larch across Siberia, Scandinavia and Canada.
• Lichens and mosses dominate the tundra, beyond the tree line, where reindeer moss is the classic species.
• Sal, Shorea robusta, characterises India's moist deciduous forests; mahogany is a tropical rainforest hardwood.

• Treating chaparral as a general word for scrub and attaching it to any dry region.
• Confusing taiga with tundra, which are neighbours but not the same belt.
• Pairing sal with dry deciduous forest, where teak is the characteristic species.

Asked as a NOT-correct pairing item across four world biomes, where three pairs are textbook and the fourth crosses two belts that share nothing.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Maquis, matorral and fynbos are vegetation types associated with which climate?

  • (a)Equatorial
  • (b)Mediterranean
  • (c)Taiga
  • (d)Steppe

  Answer(b) Mediterranean — they are the regional counterparts of the Californian chaparral.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The characteristic trees of the taiga are

  • (a)evergreen broadleaf hardwoods
  • (b)drought-adapted evergreen shrubs
  • (c)conifers such as spruce, fir, pine and larch
  • (d)lichens, mosses and sedges

  Answer(c) conifers such as spruce, fir, pine and larch — the taiga is the subarctic coniferous belt.