Plant Life
As much of the Amazon is unexplored, many of its indigenous plants and animals are unknown. Plant growth is dense and the variety of animals living is comparatively more because of the heavy rainfall and the dense forests covered with huge evergreen and coniferous forests. The forests are in fact so thick that the dense "roof" created by the leaves and branches does not allow the sunlight to reach the ground. The ground remains dark and damp. Only shade tolerant trees and vegetation may grow here. Orchids and bromeliads use trees and other plants to get closer to the sunlight. They grow hanging onto the branches or tree trunks with aerial roots, not as parasites but as epiphytes. One tropical fruit tree that is native to the Amazon is the abiu. There are thousands of plants, all in different colors, sizes, and shapes. There are also many other living organisms that have their homes in these plants.
Read more about this topic: Amazon Basin
Famous quotes containing the words plant and/or life:
“It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be,
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“I went back to my work, but now without enthusiasm. I had looked through an open door that I was not willing to see shut upon me. I began to reflect upon life rather seriously for a girl of twelve or thirteen. What was I here for? What could I make of myself? Must I submit to be carried along with the current, and do just what everybody else did?”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)