Mom: My goodness, is he still upset about his fall into the water? He's got to start thinking ahead and not behind, using his head and not his..
.sorry. Pop, I got a little carried away.
Yes, he is a difficult relative, but he surely can bake.
Wow, he even included a map and some photos of some of the inhabitants of the cloud forest. In Peru, clouds born of moisture rise from the Amazon River Basin on the eastern side of the Andes Mountains and sustain a great variety of trees, ferns, mosses, bromeliads (plants such as pineapples and Spanish moss, and other species used mostly for house plants), and orchids.
These forests are at an elevation of from 6,000 feet to 9,000 feet. The Andes Mountains run parallel to the Pacific Ocean and are bone-dry on the western slopes, but the eastern slopes are saturated by mist and clouds in Peru, whereas farther north they are moist on both sides.
Pop: The tropical Andes represents the richest biodiversity hot spot of the 25 recognized by conservation groups and deserves special attention.
It has almost twice as many plant species and four times as many endemic plants, native species found nowhere else in the world, as the second place on the list, the forests between central Mexico and the Panama Canal. Many of the Andean plants grow in an area that stretches hundreds of miles horizontally, but only hundreds of feet vertically.
Cloud forests are distinguished from other forests by the plants called epiphytes (on top of plants), plus the wet humus soil, the thick bottom layer of plants, and the immersion in clouds.
Plants struggle to lay down roots on any bare patch of bark or any other plant that will accept them. Plants grow on top of plants forming a tangle of roots, trees, and epiphytes.
Forests at 6,000 feet get up to 20 feet of moisture a year from rain, and water from the clouds may add up to another five to 20 feet.
Soils are acidic, cold, and waterlogged. This type of forest is labeled a nutrient-rich economy perched on a nutrient-poor substrate. It's a tough place to be a root.
Moss, ferns, bromeliads, and orchids cover the tree limbs and strip moisture from the clouds, holding it like a giant sponge.
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