The problem of steady free convection boundary layer over a vertical isothermal impermeable flat plate which is embedded in a fluid-saturated porous medium with volumetric heat generation or absorption is studied in this paper using the Darcy equation model. The case of the externally prescribed source terms S = S( x, y) is considered in this paper. It is shown that the corresponding boundary value problem depends on the sign of the plate temperature, which implies that the source term breaks the usual upflow or downflow symmetry of the free convection problem. Looking for similarity solutions, analytical and numerical solutions of the transformed boundary value problem are obtained for several values of the problem parameters. It is also shown that, contrary to the widely spread opinion, the exponential form of the internal heat generation term is not a necessary requirement of similarity reduction.