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Tank bromeliads: Water conservation
Some bromeliads, like the plant in front of you, have developed a sophisticated
strategy to secure the water and nutrients they need to survive in the rain forest
canopy. The leave of their rosettes overlap so tightly at their base that they
form a watertight funnel that acts as a cistern. In some bromeliads, this tank
can hold as much as 10 liters of water! From measurements taken in the Colombian
rain forest, it has been calculated that tank bromeliads can hold up to fifty
thousand liters of water per hectare of forest canopy. That’s fifty tons of water
weighing on the branches of rain forest trees from tank bromeliads alone.
But these tanks aren’t just for storing water. If you’d like to know more,
press number 302.
Audio file download
Tank bromeliads: Water conservation (MP3, 358 KB)
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