Pampas

The Pampas is a grassy plains area in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. The grasslands drain from west to east, sloping away from the Andes to the west. The fertile soil supports farming and pastureland for cattle. Cattle were introduced by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and tended by Argentines and Brazilians called gauchos. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gauchos were romanticized figures, hardy and lean poets of the grasslands. They are the cowboys of South America. Trees are scarce in the plains of the Pampas, growing chiefly along streams and rivers. The only tree native to the Pampas is the ombu, a massive trunk with softwood that holds moisture well. Poisonous sap keeps grazing animals from browsing on its saplings, which grow into forty-foot-tall spreading canopies of dark green leaves that provide much-needed shade to the grassy landscape.

From the game's History encyclopedia, AoE3: DE 100.19.18309.