Many 'tree-only' tropical plants also grow just fine on the ground
Carmona-Higuita MJ, Gerber JP, Bertelmann H, Benavides AM, Clemente Arenas ER
Native Plants
If you grow orchids, ferns, or bromeliads mounted on bark because guides call them strict epiphytes, this research suggests many of those same species will root happily in a pot of soil too.
Botanists walked through cloud forests in Colombia and Peru and checked, plant by plant, whether species labeled as tree-dwelling 'epiphytes' actually only grew on trees. Turns out ten out of twenty-seven also grew fine on the ground, and the books that classify plants as strictly epiphytic often got it wrong by a lot. It's a reminder that plant labels in field guides are often simplifications of much messier, flexible real-world behavior.
Key Findings
Researchers recorded 483 substrate observations across 27 species classified in the literature as epiphytic.
17 species grew exclusively as epiphytes in the field, while 10 also grew terrestrially, with Epiphytic Values ranging from 43% to 97%.
Literature-based classifications overestimated strict epiphytism compared to field data, with mean absolute differences up to 32%, especially in single-source references.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists tracked 27 tropical 'epiphyte' plant species growing on trees in cloud forests and found many also grow happily on the ground, meaning the old habit of sorting plants into strict epiphyte-or-terrestrial boxes doesn't match what's actually happening in the wild.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
How Epiphytic Are Epiphytes? Field Evidence for Flexible Substrate Use in Tropical Cloud Forest Plants.
Substrate use in vascular plants is commonly treated as a categorical trait where a species is either epiphytic or terrestrial. Yet many species grow on both substrates, and the degree of epiphytis...
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