Temperate in the context of Tropical countries

Summer or summertime is the hottest and brightest of the four temperate seasons, occurring after spring and before autumn. At or centred on the summer solstice, daylight hours are the longest and darkness hours are the shortest, with day length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The earliest sunrises and latest sunsets also occur near the date of the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to definition, climate, tradition, and culture. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.

Ficus (/ˈfaɪkəs/ or /ˈfiːkəs/) is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes and hemiepiphytes in the family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few species extending into the semi-warm temperate zone. The common fig (F. carica) is a temperate species native to southwest Asia and the Mediterranean region (from Afghanistan to Portugal), which has been widely cultivated from ancient times for its fruit, also referred to as figs. The fruit of most other species are also edible though they are usually of only local economic importance or eaten as bushfood. However, they are extremely important food resources for wildlife. Figs are also of considerable cultural importance throughout the tropics, both as objects of worship and for their many practical uses.

A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen and remove salt, allowing them to tolerate conditions that kill most plants. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse due to convergent evolution in several plant families. They occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics and even some temperate coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5° of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs and became widely distributed in part due to the movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago.

Mangroves are salt-tolerant (halophytic) and are adapted to live in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and a complex root system to cope with saltwater immersion and wave action. They are adapted to the low-oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud, but are most likely to thrive in the upper half of the intertidal zone.

The tropics are the region of Earth surrounding the equator, where the sun may shine directly overhead. This contrasts with the temperate or polar regions of Earth, where the Sun can never be directly overhead. Because of Earth's axial tilt, the width of the tropics (in latitude) is twice the tilt. The tropics are also referred to as the tropical zone and the torrid zone (see geographical zone).

Due to the sun's high angle throughout the year, the tropics receive the most solar energy over the course of the year, and consequently have the highest temperatures on the planet. Even when not directly overhead, the sun is still close to overhead throughout the year, therefore the tropics also have the lowest seasonal variation on the planet; "winter" and "summer" lose their temperature contrast. Instead, seasons are more commonly divided by precipitation variations than by temperature variations or daylight hours.

Autumn, also known as fall in North American English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, beginning in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March (Southern Hemisphere). Autumn is the season when the duration of daytime becomes noticeably shorter and the temperature cools considerably. Day length decreases and night length increases as the season progresses until the winter solstice in December (Northern Hemisphere) and June (Southern Hemisphere). One of its main features in temperate climates is the striking change in colour of the leaves of deciduous trees as they prepare to shed.

Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of the term varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. When it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. At the spring equinox, also called the vernal equinox, days and nights are approximately twelve hours long, with daytime length increasing and nighttime length decreasing as the season progresses until the summer solstice. The spring equinox is in March in the Northern Hemisphere and in September in the Southern Hemisphere, while the summer solstice is in June in the Northern Hemisphere and in December in the Southern Hemisphere.

Spring and "springtime" refer to the season, and also to ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth. Subtropical and tropical areas have climates better described in terms of other seasons, e.g. dry or wet, monsoonal or cyclonic. Cultures may have local names for seasons which have little equivalence to the terms originating in Europe.

The climate of Ireland is mild, humid and changeable with abundant rainfall and a lack of temperature extremes. Ireland's climate is defined as a temperate oceanic climate, or Cfb on the Köppen climate classification system, a classification it shares with most of northwest Europe. The island receives generally warm summers and cool winters.

As Ireland is downwind of a large ocean, it is considerably milder in winter than other locations at the same latitude, for example Newfoundland in Canada or Sakhalin in Russia. The Atlantic overturning circulation, which includes ocean currents such as the North Atlantic Current and Gulf Stream, releases additional heat over the Atlantic, which is then carried by the prevailing winds towards Ireland giving, for example, Dublin a milder winter climate than other temperate oceanic climates in similar locations.

Salmon (/ˈsæmən/; pl.: salmon) are any of several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera Salmo and Oncorhynchus of the family Salmonidae, native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (Salmo) and North Pacific (Oncorhynchus) basins. Salmon is a colloquial or common name used for fish in this group, but is not a scientific name. Other closely related fish in the same family include trout, char, grayling, whitefish, lenok and taimen, all coldwater fish of the subarctic and cooler temperate regions with some sporadic endorheic populations in Central Asia.

Salmon are typically anadromous: they hatch in the shallow gravel beds of freshwater headstreams and spend their juvenile years in rivers, lakes and freshwater wetlands, migrate to the ocean as adults and live like sea fish, then return to their freshwater birthplace to reproduce. However, populations of several species are restricted to fresh waters (i.e. landlocked) throughout their lives. Folklore has it that the fish return to the exact stream where they themselves hatched to spawn, and tracking studies have shown this to be mostly true. A portion of a returning salmon run may stray and spawn in different freshwater systems; the percent of straying depends on the species of salmon. Homing behavior has been shown to depend on olfactory memory.

The bird family Tytonidae, which includes the barn owls Tyto and the bay owls Phodilus, is one of the two families of owls, the other being the true owls or typical owls, Strigidae. Tytonidae are medium to large owls with large heads and characteristic heart-shaped faces. They have long, strong legs with powerful talons. Tytonidae also differ from the Strigidae in structural details relating in particular to the sternum and feet.

The family is wide-ranging, although they are not very tolerant of severe winter cold, so are absent from northern areas of Europe, Asia, and North America; they are also absent from driest desert regions. They live in a wide range of habitats from semi-deserts to forests, and from temperate latitudes to the tropics. Within these habitats, they live near agricultural areas with high amounts of human activity. The majority of the 20 living species of barn owls are poorly known. Some, like the red owl, have barely been seen or studied since their discovery, in contrast to the western barn owl Tyto alba, which is one of the best-known owl species in the world. However, some subspecies of the western barn owl possibly deserve to be separate species, but are very poorly known.

In botany, the term perennial (per- + -ennial, "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. It has thus been defined as a plant that lives more than 2 years. The term is also loosely used to distinguish plants with little or no woody growth (secondary growth in girth) from trees and shrubs, which are also technically perennials. An estimated 94% of plant species are perennials.

Perennials (especially small flowering plants) that grow and bloom over the spring and summer, die back every autumn and winter, and then return in the spring from their rootstock or other overwintering structure, are known as herbaceous perennials. However, depending on the rigours of the local climate (temperature, moisture, organic content in the soil, microorganisms), a plant that is a perennial in its native habitat, may be treated by a gardener as an annual and planted out every year, from seed, from cuttings, or from divisions. Tomato vines, for example, live several years in their natural tropical/ subtropical habitat but are grown as annuals in temperate regions because their above-ground biomass does not survive the winter.

Prunus is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs from the family Rosaceae. The genus includes plums, cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots and almonds (collectively stonefruit). The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution, being native to the temperate regions of North America, the neotropics of South America, and temperate and tropical regions of Eurasia and Africa, There are about 340 accepted species as of March 2024.

Many members of the genus are widely cultivated for their sweet, fleshy fruit and for decorative purposes of their flowers. Prunus fruit are drupes, or stone fruits. The fleshy mesocarp surrounding the endocarp is edible while the endocarp itself forms a hard, inedible shell called the pyrena ("stone" or "pit"). This shell encloses the seed (or "kernel"), which is edible in some species (such as sweet almonds), but poisonous in many others (such as apricot kernels). Besides being eaten off the hand, most Prunus fruit are also commonly used in processing, such as jam production, canning, drying, and the seeds for roasting.

Hardwood is wood from angiosperm trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from angiosperm trees) contrasts with softwood (which is from gymnosperm trees).

A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea, a genus of some 37 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Picea is treated either in the subfamily Pinoideae, or the sole genus in its own subfamily Piceoideae.

Spruces can be distinguished from other genera of the family Pinaceae by their needles (leaves), which are four-sided and attached singly to small persistent peg-like structures (pulvini) on the twigs. The needles are shed when 4–10 years old, leaving the twigs rough with the retained pegs. Pests of spruce forestry include green spruce aphid, eastern spruce budworm, European spruce bark beetle, and great spruce bark beetle.

Rhus typhina, the staghorn sumac, is a species of flowering plant in the family Anacardiaceae, native to eastern North America. It is primarily found in southeastern Canada, the northeastern and midwestern United States, and the Appalachian Mountains, but it is widely cultivated as an ornamental throughout the temperate world. It is an invasive species in some parts of the world.

A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal. A landscape includes the physical elements of geophysically defined landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings, and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to local and national identity.

The character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and a sense of place that differentiates one region from other regions. It is the dynamic backdrop to people's lives. Landscape can be as varied as farmland, a landscape park or wilderness. The Earth has a vast range of landscapes including the icy landscapes of polar regions, mountainous landscapes, vast arid desert landscapes, islands, and coastal landscapes, densely forested or wooded landscapes including past boreal forests and tropical rainforests and agricultural landscapes of temperate and tropical regions. The activity of modifying the visible features of an area of land is referred to as landscaping.

The geography of Scotland is varied from rural lowlands to unspoilt uplands, and from large cities to sparsely inhabited islands. Located in Northern Europe, Scotland comprises the northern part of the island of Great Britain as well as 790 surrounding islands encompassing the major archipelagos of the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and the Inner and Outer Hebrides. The only land border is with England, which runs for 96 miles (154 kilometres) in a northeasterly direction from the Solway Firth in the west to the North Sea on the east coast. Separated by the North Channel, the island of Ireland lies 13 nautical miles (24 kilometres) from Mull of Kintyre on the Scottish mainland. Norway is located 190 nmi (350 km) northeast of Scotland across the North Sea. The Atlantic Ocean, which fringes the coastline of western and northern Scotland and its islands, influences the temperate, maritime climate of the country.

Scotland contains the majority of mountainous terrain in the UK. The topography of Scotland is distinguished by the Highland Boundary Fault which traverses the Scottish mainland from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. The faultline separates two distinctively different physiographic regions; namely the Highlands to the north and west and the Lowlands to the south and east. The more rugged Highland region contains the majority of Scotland's mountainous terrain, including the highest peak, Ben Nevis.

Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands are terrestrial biomes defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The predominant vegetation in these biomes consists of grass and/or shrubs. The climate is temperate and ranges from semi-arid to semi-humid. The habitat type differs from tropical grasslands in the annual temperature regime and the types of species found here.

The habitat type is known as prairie in North America, pampas in South America, veld in Southern Africa and steppe in Asia. Generally speaking, these regions are devoid of trees, except for riparian or gallery forests associated with streams and rivers.