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Epiphytes, Lianas and Hemiepiphytes

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Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants

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Abstract

Perhaps epiphytism could be thought to be primarily the utilization of any possible surface for holdfast and establishment, i.e. a conquest of space with epiphytes found in aquatic and terrestrial habitats made up of various combinations of lower and higher plants. In aquatic habitats, i.e. lakes, rivers and the sea, there are always algae growing on each other. This not only applies to unicellular and filamentous forms and their colonies, but also to macroalgae like kelp and red algae. In the mesic terrestrial climate many lower plants are epiphytic, like mosses and lichens and also some forms of small pleurococcoid aerial green algae as well as cyanobacteria (blue green algae). In the tropics lower plants may constitute massive formations of epiphytic biomass, e.g. the mosses in upper montane cloud forests (“moss-forests”, Fig. 4.1.).

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  1. Institut für Botanik, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 3-5, D-64287, Darmstadt, Germany

    Professor Dr. Ulrich Lüttge

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Lüttge, U. (1997). Epiphytes, Lianas and Hemiepiphytes. In: Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03340-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03340-1_4

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