Plants
- There are plants in the rain forest with fruits that are longer than a baseball bat. Some are even bigger than a bicycle tire!
- Epiphytes are plants that grow on trees or other plants and have roots that NEVER touch the ground.
Epiphytes
- Orchids are a type of flower. Nearly all orchids are epiphytes. There are over 20,000 different kinds of orchids in rain forests around the world.
- Fungi are plants that don't need sunlight to live such as mushrooms and toadstools.That makes it much easier for fungi to live on the forest floor because the trees, vines, flowers, and animals cover a lot of the rain forest floor so the forest floor barely get any sunlight.
Fox tail orchid
Shark's paintbrush fungi
- 80% of the flowers in Australian Rain Forests are not found anywhere else in the world!
- Central African Rain Forests have more than 8,000 different species of plants.
- More than 2/3 of the world's plant species are found in the tropical rain forests.
- A rain forest might have plants that cure ebola, and if we cut down the rain forest we could destroy that, too!