Post Card From Oz

EPIPHYTES. One of the characteristics of rainforests is the large number of of epiphytes. These are plants that grow on other plants but which do not draw food from them. In the US, Spanish moss would be an example. At Lamington National Park, we saw a wide variety of epiphytic ferns and orchids. King orchids are pictured here. Instead of growing on a tree trunk as is typical, here they are growing on along cliff edge. These orchids were spectacular in bloom. Another orchid, the Antarctic Beech orchid, grows only on Nothofagus moorei, the Anatarctic Beech tree. These trees now only occur in isolated cool, moist spots in Australia and South America, but are contained in the Antarctic fossil record. If these trees become extinct, so will the orchid they host.

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