300px|right|thumb|Springtime in [[Chilean matorral a few kilometers north of Santiago along the Pan-American Highway]]
Matorral is a Spanish word which, along with the near-synonymous tomillares, broadly applies to shrubland, thicket, or bushes. It is used in naming and describing a Mediterranean climate ecosystem in Southern Europe.
Mediterranean region
Matorral originally referred to the matorral shrublands and woodlands in the Mediterranean climate regions of Spain and other Mediterranean Basin countries. These scrub shrublands and woodlands are a plant community and a distinct habitat. Other common general names for this Mediterranean region shrubland habitat ecosystem are maquis and garrigue in France, macchia Mediterranea in Italy, phrygana in Greece, mato Portugal, batha in Israel. The term is now used more broadly to include similar bio-assemblages wherever they occur.
In Portugal, the term mato or matagal is used to refer to the scrublands, or heaths, that formed on the Cambrian and Silurian schists in the north and central parts of Portugal.
Mediterranean matorral shrublands are often part of a mosaic landscape, interspersed with forests, woodlands, grasslands, and scrublands.
Americas
The term matorral followed the Spanish colonization of the Americas and is used to refer to Mediterranean climate woodlands and scrub, as well as xeric shrublands ecosystems in Mexico, Chile,