The Daintree Rainforest
By Ameer Munir in 5/6P
Introduction:
The Daintree Rainforest is a self-sustaining forest that has lived for over 135 million years and has several important elements ; warmth, rainfal, nutrients and sunlight. The rainforest has survived all natural disasters like volcanos, the rising and falling of sea levels, glacier[icebergs] movement and cyclonic winds. The first person to discover the Daintree rainforest was a man named Sir Joseph Banks in the early 1770's. George Dalrymple named the rainforest ' Daintree Rainforest ', for Richard Daintree in 1873 when he travelled over by boat.
Description:
The Daintree Rainforest is a tropical Rainforest. The temperature is usually arounf 30 degrees and rainfall is common all year round. It is a very humid and wet environment. Tropical rainforests' contain more than a half of all the types of animals and plants on Earth. It is full of trees and shrubs and it would be very hard to look at the ground of the rainforest from birds eye view because of the emergent layer.
Flora:
- The Daintree Rainforest has many different plants. There are over 800 different trees identified in the rainforest. There are other many different plants like; Ferns, Palms, King Ferns, Scarlet Beans, Spinning Top Fungi, Blue Orchids, Fairies Baskets and lots and lots of Vines!. One of the many plants in the Daintree is ' The Stinging Tree Plant '. The Stinging Tree Plant has 10,000 microscopic hairs on each leaf, if you were to touch this one leaf the hairs will dig into your skin and sting you. The stinging can last for over 6 months.Another scary plant in the Daintree is 'The Strangler Fig '. The Strangler Fig slowly grows onto any tree and slowly strangles the tree to death. There are some strange plants that grow in the rainforest like the ' Idiot Fruit Tree '.
The Stinging Tree Plant
Fauna:
The Boyds Forest Dragon
The Green Tree Frog
The Southern Cassowary
Threats and Dangers: