Love this photo of a sunburst through the thick arboreal bryosphere of the cloud forest.
A ‘bryophyte’ is a small nonvascular plant, which might sound super wierd but what we’re actually talking about here are things like mosses, which are of course pretty common in southern Ontario too. Bryophytes (along with many other plants) can be ‘epiphytic’, another science-y word to refer to the fact that they often grow off other plants (think lichen growing on tree bark for example). What makes the cloud forest so special is that there is so much moisture in the air all the time that the trunks of the trees are absolutely covered in epiphytes and bryophytes! In fact, there are so many epiphytes, that these plants actually trap a layer of soil against the tree trunk, which provides a habit for millions of different bugs you’d normally only expect to see in the ground beneath your feet!
This is what we call the arboreal bryosphere. Its so thick in places that we could actually plunge our entire hands into the thick mossy layer and pull out handfuls to examine under a microscope for little critters!
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#earth_shotz #ecosystem #plants #naturephotography #nature_marvels #nakedplanet #naturegeography #adventure #wonderlust #travelbug #asthetic #sunburst #rainforest #biologynerd #biologyiscool #bnesimppl
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