The true Tusco-Emilian Apennines can be distinguished from the mountainous and hilly groups of the Preapennines, separated by an imaginary line linking Montecatini Terme to Chiusi. Metallifere belong to the Tuscan Apennines. The rivers in Tuscany are irregular in size, torrential and winding, for they have adapted to the morphology of the region. With the exception of the upper courses of the Reno, Santerno, Lamone, Marecchia and Foglia, which enter the Adriatic, all the other Tuscan rivers flow into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The climate is temperate but there are considerable zonal variations depending on the distance from the sea, altitude and the position of the mountains.
Precipitations fall mainly in spring and autumn.
Metallifere, while the driest are the coastal belt, the plains and the intermontane basins. The mantle of natural vegetation has been greatly modified by man though various characteristic aspects still exist. Common along the coast is the Mediterranean scrub, an underwood of aromatic evergreen shrubs, which spreads though, increasingly sparsely, into the Arno Valley as far as Florence . There are still beautiful pinewoods on the coast as well as holly woods and cork trees. Most of these woods are coppices of low trees which are felled at intervals to provide logs and charcoal.