PLANT SOCIETIES 323 



lingers on for fifty or a hundred years, reaching meantime 

 a diameter of not more than two inches, and then, on 

 getting more light, shoots up into a large and valuable 

 timber tree.^ 



394. Epiphytes. — It is even easier for a plant to secure 

 enough sunlight in a forest region by perching itself upon 

 the trunk or branches of a tree than by climbing, as our 

 wild grapevines and the great tropical lianas do. There 

 is a large number of such perched plants, or epiphytes, 

 embracing species of many different groups of seed-plants 

 and of spore-plants. The fern shown in Fig. 228 is a good 

 example of an epiphyte. Instances among seed-plants are 

 the so-called Florida moss (Plate IV) and orchids like 

 those in Fig. 13. 



1 See the Primer of Forestry, Part I, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 1899, pp. 33-35. 



