A fascinating world

Depending on the altitude, tropical mountain forests, cloud forests, bamboo forests as well as peat forests and moors determine the landscape. Again and again the forests are intersected by deep gorges. Everywhere water splashes, flows or roars down the mountain slopes into the valleys where rivers form. There are countless waterfalls and caves.

The rainforest lives up to its name. It rains almost every day. The forest makes some of the rain itself. A single giant tree can evaporate several tons of water in a single day, which then gets caught in the dense vegetation as mist, falls to the ground as rain, or is carried as clouds by the wind to the dry Andes, where it provides rain. The rest of the rain, which supplies the jungle of Mein Regenwald with water, is carried by the wind from the lowland forests further east and falls to the ground again in the mountains. The destruction of the lowland forests hundreds of kilometers away is therefore also a threat to the particularly species-rich mountain forests of Mein Regenwald.

Especially at higher altitudes, the soil is like a sponge. It consists of meter-thick layers of dead plants. It absorbs the rainwater and in the drier season this gigantic water reservoir releases the clean water very slowly to the streams. These flow into the great rivers of Amazonia, which therefore never dry out even in summer.

Water is abundant, but sunlight is a problem for the many plants in the rainforest. In the eternal battle for the best place in the sun, each plant has its own strategy. The jungle giants grow slowly, initially in the shade of other trees, until they reach the canopy themselves. Other tree species, the so-called pioneers, conquer clearings created on the banks of rivers or by the death of a giant tree. They grow quickly to be the first to reach the light, but are then caught up again and displaced by the slow-growing giants. Because of the lack of light on the forest floor, most of the smaller plants in the mountain rainforest live epiphytically, i.e. they climb or tendril their way up the trees or have their seeds carried directly high into the treetops via the excretions of birds and monkeys. There they germinate and grow. There is hardly a square inch on the trunk or branches of the trees that does not serve as a habitat for other plants. Countless species of lianas, orchids, bromeliads, mosses, lichens, ferns, philodendrons, begonias, etc. grow on the trees. Botanists in the region have counted hundreds of different plant species on a single primeval forest giant.