Amazon Rainforest Flora
Amazon Rainforest Flora
Amazon-Rainforest.org
The Amazon rainforest has a huge live collection of flora species. Botanical experts say that in 2.5 acres of the forest you can find 700 different species of trees and twice that number of plants. One of the most awesome things you will notice is that the forest has a high density of trees and they are very tall. Many trees reach 130 meters high (some species reach 200 feet), and under they form a shadowed place where at times is hard to see the sun. The high canopy of the Amazon rainforest is a very unknown place even for most botanists and until recently very few researches have even explored this hard to reach area of the forest. The high canopy is also the home of thousands of still undiscovered species of insects and birds.
Although it may be hard to believe, the soil of the Amazon rainforest is very poor in nutrients. If you show a report listing the nutrients of that soil to a botanist he or she will probably say that nothing but a cactus will grow in that. This is an astonishing fact since there are huge trees and lush vegetation all over the place. The Amazon rainforest soil holds only 20% of the nutrients in the forest; the other 80% are in the trees and plants themselves. The explanation is rather simple; the Amazon Region has a dry and a wet season. In the wet season the water level of the Amazon River rises dramatically, and in some places it reaches 15 meters higher than dry season. This means that in the rainy season a huge portion of the forest gets flooded. This works like a great mechanism for exchanging and transporting nutrients and is crucial for the whole forest. The Amazon rainforest soil works like a sponge and even being not very nutrient rich, it can hold enough nutrients to help maintain the trees until the next rainy season.
Please visit the website for the rest of the article.
Votes:27
Comments: 0