page_title: Macaronesia
section_title: Geography and environment
hierarchical_section_title: Macaronesia / Geography and environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Laurisilva in Madeira on ER 104 road.
context_page_description: The Macaronesian islands, or simply Macaronesia is a modern name for several groups of islands of volcanic origin in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Europe and Africa. They belong to three countries: Portugal, Spain, and Cape Verde.
context_section_description: The islands of Macaronesia are volcanic in origin, and are thought to be the product of several geologic hotspots.
  The climate of the Macaronesian islands goes from Mediterranean in the Azores and Madeira to arid in Cape Verde. The Portuguese archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira have a generally cooler climate and higher rainfall than the Canary Islands and Cape Verde.
  Even if the distances between the different groups of islands are large, the plants and animals are similar and there are many endemic plants that are found only in these islands.
  The islands have a unique biogeography, and are home to several distinct plant and animal communities. The laurel forests, known as laurisilva, of Macaronesia are a type of mountain cloud forest with species of a vegetation type which originally covered much of the Mediterranean Basin when the climate of the region was more humid and evolved to adapt to island conditions. These forests once covered most of the Azores, Madeira, and parts of the Canary Islands ("Canaries") between 400–1200 m altitude (the eastern Canaries and Cape Verde being too dry).
caption: Laurel forest (Laurisilva) in the Madeira island.
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