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Native grasslands of various types were once abundant in the southeastern United States ("the South"), but have declined so much that even many ecologists have not recognized their existence.�Only by understanding how these communities came into being, how they waxed and waned over time, and what factors maintained them, can we establish a scientifically sound basis for conserving and restoring these ecosystems today and into the future. As defined here, native grasslands of the South include treeless prairies, mountaintop balds, savannas and woodlands, barrens, glades, outcrops, and canebrakes. Longleaf pine savannas were matrix communities across most of the southeastern Coastal Plain, whereas most other grassland types occurred as patches of various sizes within a forest matrix. Paleoecological evidence shows existence of savannas similar to today's millions of years ago, in the Miocene or earlier. The high degree of species endemism in these grasslands, especially in the Coastal Plain and including many ancient taxa, provides further evidence of antiquity. The rate of endemism is high enough that the Coastal Plain is now recognized as a global biodiversity hotspot. Fire is a dominant ecological process in most southeastern grasslands, with this region having the highest lightning incidence in the United States. Many plant species, today and in the past, show fire-adaptive traits and depend on fire for their existence. Many other southeastern grasslands were edaphic, restricted to unusual substrates such as highly calcareous, saline, serpentine, shrink-swell, or shallow soils. Fire is rare in some of these communities. Large herbivores were probably very important in maintaining many southeastern grassland types in the past, with herbivores probably interacting with fire much like in the Great Plains. Conserving and restoring both natural and semi-natural grasslands, large and small, is a high priority in this region.