EPIPHYTES
Epiphytes are plants that depend on an object or tree to survive, but do not cause any damage or are parasites. And they are independent because they do not depend on the nutrients or water of the tree in which they live only on their support.
Lichen
They are organisms that are born from the symbiosis between a fungus and an alga. There are very simple lichens and others are very complex, although they are always multicellular organisms, which means, formed by more than a single cell. They are very resistant to various environmental conditions and that is why we find them in many ecosystems.
Lichens are easy to find in damp places and grow on crust-like tree stems. It is said that when there are many lichens in a forest it means that the air of the place is very pure. The biggest enemy for lichens is contamination, they absorb water but at the same time they also absorb waste material from burning fuels, for example: cars, buses, dumpers & factories.
Orchid
Its scientific name is Orchids, they are a family member of the monocot plants that are a group of angiosperms, which means flowering plants and seeds with a single cotyledon that forms the first leaves of the plant. Its flowers are very special and diverse, in fact there are 25.000 to 30.000 species that vary not only in shape and color but also in size, you can found some with few millimeters long and others up to almost 20 centimeters in diameter. The fragance of Orchid flowers can also change a lot from one to another. We can find Orchids in the tropics and subtropics from sea level to 5.000 meters above sea level. The only places in which we can not find them is in deserts and poles.
Orchids are frequently epiphytes, which means that they grow on another plant but without depending nutritionally on this, they are not parasite
"Colombia is the country with the largest variety of Orchids in the world with 4.270 registered species".
Bromeliad
Bromeliad is a plant in the Bromeliaceae family which is often epiphytic, means they use other trees as a structure but they, same as orchids, are not parasitic and do no harm to the other plant on which they grow. Some of them can also be terrestrial bromeliads and grow on earth.
Bromeliads are very special and showy plants with a beautiful flower that can vary greatly in colour, it is said that they have been on earth for more than 65 million years, it has been a strong plant that has survived different ecosystems. "Bromeliad has the peculiarity that its leaves grow as if they were a rosette, these leaves are curved inward and overlap each other forming a kind of cavity."
Bromeliads feed mostly on the water that is stored in the cavity formed by the leaves, they need humidity to live and that is why they are born in the Andean forests with fogs and humidity in its environment. The colour of its leaves depends on the light they are exposed to, the greater the sunlight the more vivid the colour of the flower.
It is very easy to have bromeliads at home, being plants so adaptable to different environments they are easy and simple care.