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Rainforest Plants

There are many wonderful plants to be found in the rainforest. Did you know that a typical 10km square area contains 1,500 kinds of flowering plants and 750 tree species!! These plants form a system of layers, which we looked at earlier. Do you remember what they are? If not, lets remind ourselves. They are:

The Top Layer

The Canopy

The Underlayer

The Forest Floor

Lets look at some of the wonderful plants that you can find in the rainforest!

This innocent looking plant is called the Venus Flytrap,but it's not as innocent as it looks!! It is a carnivorous plant that eats small insects like flies. It lives on the forest floor, or understory, and grows to be about 5 and a half inches. It attracts it's prey by emitting a faint smell of rotton meat, which is usually not detected by humans. When the insect enters the the open trap, it closes and slowly starts to digest the insect. It can take from a week to a month to digest it's prey. It's name comes from the fact that it most commonly attracts flies.

This wonderful tree is called the Strangler Tree, also known as the Banyan Tree. It gets it's name from the fact that it grows around a palm tree. Seeds from a Banyan tree are carried by birds, and dropped near a palm tree. The seeds germinate in the monsoon season, and send very slender, thread-like roots to the ground. These roots surround the stem of the palm tree in a delicate network. They gradually grow in thickness to become mighty ropes. Then, they press and squeeze the stem of the palm tree so firmly that all tubes that carry water from the bottom to the top of the tree, are crushed and blocked. The palm tree can't survive, and it soon dies, causing it's trunk to rot away, leaving behind a hollow, case-like structure, formed by the roots of the Banyan tree.

This type of plant is called a bromeliad. A bromeliad is a type of air plant. Many types of animals live in these cup-like plants. These plants hang from trees, and are furry. There are more than 2,000 types of bromeliads in the world! Frogs can lay their eggs in these plants. The tadpoles live inside it until they are fully grown, and ready to hop out. Slugs and spiders also live in this environment of bromeliads.

This type of plant is called a epiphyte. They grow high in the rainforest's upper stories. In fact, you might have seen an epiphyte before!! They are also known as mosses, lichens, ferns and bromeliads. Epiphytes grow better when they are high in the rainforest's levels. They need wind and sunlight to survive. Most of them don't hurt the plant they live on. The orchid is an epiphyte. Its roots act like a sponge. The word epiphyte means "air plant".