There is a variety of plants in the African Grasslands, often 3 to 6 feet tall at maturity. It looks like the grasses are in thick clumps, but actually, there are often some bare ground and shrubs in between. There were many shrubs because of the weather there, but there is also some some drought-resistant, fire-resistant or browse-resistant trees, which have an open shrub layer. Because of the weather, the plants in grassland are all have a feature--deep roots. This defense also allows the plant to survive fires because the root is undamaged and can regrow after the fire.
Typical Plants In Tropical Grasslands
Above paragraph already showed there are various grasses in grassland. Here are pictures about unique and typical plants found in this biome.
Typical succession for this biome
Adansonia
Here is a picture of adansonia above, it has a common name--baobab trees. It needs hundreds years to grow up to climax community. You can find out that baobab trees do not have leaves, because of the dry weather, it can reduce the evaporation of water. It is so big, so it was considered to be the largest living individual.
Invasive species
There are two invasive species.
African Star Grass
Although African star grass flowers, it does not set viable seed and so has to be planted from cuttings. Star grass is used mainly for soil conservation works as it will quickly give a good ground cover from rapid stolon growth.
African love grass
African love grass is also perennial grass, it grows between 20-120 cm high. It is also one thick grass covered most of areas of grasslands.The leaves of African lovegrass are dark green to blue-green in colour.
Adaptations In Plants
Here I want to introduced two plants, they are trees. As we known, the weather there is dry, so there were many drought and fire happened every year, the trees are not very easy to survive for a long time. But these two types trees are very strong, not only survived, and adapt the weather. They are:
Acacia
Acacia is commonly known as thorn trees or shittah trees. In the history, Europeans used it as a source of medicine. Lots of grazing animals eat it as their food, such as gazelle, gerenuk and giraffe. So the trees are shaped progressively of increasing size and height. Its leaves are Phyllodium, very narrow and long. This shape can reduce the evaporation of water. It has flowers, mostly the flowers are yellow, some are white.
Pennisetum purpureum
Pennistum purpureum has other names, Napler grass, Uganda grass. Pennisetum pupureum is known as its common name--elephant grass. As its name shows, it provided food for elephant. It is not only a palatable graze for animals and also a groundcover to reduce erosion and quickly revegetate denuded soil. Napier grass is the most important fodder crop for the dairy farmers in East Africa.It is also used as source of fuel.
Here is a picture above shows an elephant is eating elephant grass.
Pyramid of Energy
Here is a picture of the Food Web in this biome.
I create a Pyramid of Energy shows below:
Symbiotic Relationships
Symbiotic relationships have three types, they are mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.
There is a kind of herb commonly known as rattle thrives at the cost of the grasses.It attaches itself on to the roots of grasses. So that it can absorb a part of the nutrients meant for the grass, sucking it right at the source. Here is the picture shows blow.
Cited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page;
http://www.defenders.org/grasslands/tropical-grasslands;
https://askabiologist.asu.edu/plants-savanna;baidu.com(Chinese website);
http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests-diseases-and-weeds/weeds/a-z-of-weeds/african-lovegrass;
http://www.tropicalgrasslands.asn.au/pastures/star.htm;
All pictures are from goole.com.
etc.