Nils Köster. Epiphyte Working Group. Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants. Bonn. Germany

“While it is often difficult to spot the fascinating wildlife and plants in the penumbral brush of tropical rain forests, life takes place most spectacularly in the canopy, high above our heads. Not only do most of the trees themselves bloom and fruit there and attract immense numbers of birds, bats, and insects. Numerous orchids, bromeliads, ferns, and other so-called epiphytes grow high above the ground on the branches and twigs of their host trees, benefiting of the full sunlight.


The epiphytic life requires scores of adaptations to this fragile habitat without any contact to the forest soil. Epiphytes developed a multitude of strategies to obtain and store both water and nutrients, like tank bromeliads and trash-basket ferns. They also show intricate and highly specialized systems of pollination and dispersal, augmenting the diversity of animals involved as well.


Unless fallen trees reveal their manifold inhabitants, scientists have to climb up into the canopy in order to explore the diversity of epiphytes. At Yasuní, we found almost 150 different epiphyte species on not more than 0.1 hectares of rain forest. Worldwide, this is the highest epiphyte diversity ever recorded for an area of that size - another evidence for the enormous biodiversity of Yasuní and a reason to support the ‘Yasuní Green Gold’ campaign.”


Nils Köster

Epiphyte Working Group. Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants. Bonn. Germany