Chaparral:
- : a thicket of dwarf evergreen oaks
broadly : a dense impenetrable thicket of shrubs or dwarf trees- : an ecological community composed of shrubby plants adapted to dry summers and moist winters that occurs especially in southern California [Merriam-Webster]
Noted in “Study finds Lyme-carrying ticks next to beaches and ‘pretty much wherever we looked,” Paulina Firozi, WaPo:
“In classic oak woodlands, there’s a fair number of studies. But nobody had looked at the chaparral, which is that scrubby stuff in the hills before it hits the ocean,” [John Aucott, director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center] said. He said the dearth of research in such areas may be because the known reservoir animals don’t really live there.
