A tropical rain forest has more kinds of trees than any other area in the world. Scientists have counted about 100 to 300 species in one 2 1/2-acre (1-hectare) area in South America. Seventy percent of the plants in the rainforest are trees.
About 1/4 of all the medicines we use come from rainforest plants. Curare comes from a tropical vine, and is used as an anesthetic and to relax muscles during surgery. Quinine, from the cinchona tree, is used to treat malaria. A person with lymphocytic leukemia has a 99% chance that the disease will go into remission because of the rosy periwinkle. More than 1,400 varieties of tropical plants are thought to be potential cures for cancer.
Pitcher Plant (Nepenthes rafflesiana)
Some plants are adapted to obtain nutrients from animal matter. This plant grows to 30 feet tall and may have pitchers 12 inches in length, usually crammed full of digested insects. Pitcher plants also eat small mammals and reptiles that attempt to steal the insects from the pitcher.
CaCao Tree (Theobroma cacao)
When we see the word “cacao” we associate it with chocolate, but it’s a little more complicated than that. The cacao tree is an evergreen, which grows a pod containing 20 to 60 reddish-brown cocoa beans. When harvested, it takes anywhere from seven to 14 pods to produce one pound of dry cocoa beans, which is turned into delicious chocolate. It’s important for cacao to be harvested sustainably, since chocolate is in very high demand.
Orchids (Orchidaceae)
Native to warm, humid environments, orchid plants thrive in the Amazon rainforest. Though orchids grow most commonly in ground soil outside of tropical environments, in the Amazon orchids grow from both the forest floor and as epiphytes, or flowers that grow on a host, commonly the branches and limbs of trees. Orchids remain a staple of rainforests due to the large number of seeds that they produce. These small seeds scatter through the forest, creating new plants.