Epiphytes: the so-called air plants grow on branches high in the trees, using the limbs merely for support and extracting moisture from the air and trapping the constant leaf=fall and wind=blown dust. Bromeliads (pineapple family) are especially abudant in the neotropics; the orchid family is widely distributed in all three formations of the tropical rainforest. As demonstration of the relative aridity of exposed branches in the high canopy, epiphytic cacti also occur in the Americas.

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