Many friends come to our Mengyuan Wonderland to participate in the rainforest crossing, and in the process of crossing, they will always be inadvertently shocked by the dense plants growing in mid-air!
Mengyuan Wonderland tropical rainforest through
Tall trees soar into the sky, the branches of the canopy are covered with all kinds of plants, bird's nest ferns, orchids, vine plants... It's like a big natural garden in mid-air.
In fact, this is a unique phenomenon in the tropical rainforest, and its name is "Hanging Garden".
Hanging Gardens
The "Hanging Garden" is also known as the "Canopy Garden". Due to the wide variety and luxuriant growth of tropical rainforest plants, the living space between plants is limited, so many epiphytes and climbing plants survive on the trunks, forming a unique "hanging garden" scene in the tropical rainforest.
This phenomenon is very common in tropical rainforests, the competition for plants in tropical rainforests is very fierce, there is almost no sunlight in the lower layers of the rainforest, and the soil is poor, in order to get sunlight and nutrients, many plants need to move their homes to mid-air and cling to large trees to survive.
If the seeds of some ferns are swallowed by birds and cannot be fully digested, and after being excreted, they fall into the cracks in the bark of other trees, and the seeds can draw water from them to take root and sprout, and new plants will grow on the trunk.
Mengyuan Wonderland Rainforest crosses
There are also some vines that climb tall trees to grow in order to fight for more sunlight. Sometimes, hundreds of plant species live on a single tree, forming an epiphyte community in the air.
Aerial dwellers of the rainforest
The residents of the hanging garden left the soil and attached themselves to the trees, but they absorbed the water themselves, only needed rain and dew and water vapor, made their own nutrients, did not ask for the trees, but occupied the space on the trees, which can be said to be excellent residents.
Let's take a look at which residents are here!
Mengyuan Wonderland
Nest fern
Nest fern is a medium-sized epiphytic herb of the family Ironhorn fern family, The Ironhorn Fern.
They epithetate on the trunk like a large bird's nest, and this unique shape can be very good at collecting leaves, small insects and bird droppings and turning them into nutrients.
They take root by air to absorb moisture and nitrogen from the air, grow slowly, and expand in scale
pineapple
Pineapple is also a member of the air dwellers, its leaves are neatly arranged ring after ring, forming a large funnel, which can very well store water for itself and small animals.
In addition to providing water for themselves, it can also become the home of other small animals, and the baby dart frogs live here until they become frogs.
orchid
The beautiful orchid family is also one of the inhabitants of the air. They grow on tree branches, rely on water vapor in the air, rain and dew, and absorb nutrients from rotten branches and leaves between tree trunks, animal droppings and carcasses.
They do not rob the tree of nutrients and moisture, but also add beauty to the tree, and every year when the orchids bloom, it is the most beautiful time in the hanging garden.
The rainforest is a complex and perfect ecosystem in which all plants have to find the most suitable survival mode.
Although these epiphytes do not plunder the nutrients of trees, sometimes because their number is too large, the weight exceeds the carrying capacity of the branches of the tree, often causing the branches to break and fall to the ground.
The Hanging Gardens are not only home to many plants, but also to the largest number of creatures in the canopy area, with tiny fungi, dragonflies, mosquitoes, birds, and monkeys also inhabiting the area.