Growth forms: Various growth forms represent strategies to reach sunlight:

• 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.
    • Venezuelan rainforest epiphyte
    • epiphyes engulfing tree trunk
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  •  Bromeliads (pineapple family) are especially abundant; 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.
    • Peru rainforest bromeliad
    • red & yellow bromeliad flower
    • veined leaf bromeliad
    • Orchid
    • Epiphytes in the tree canopy
• Lianas: woody vines grow rapidly up the tree trunks when there is a temporary gap in the canopy and flower and fruit in the tree tops of the A and B layers. Many are deciduous.
  • strangler fig liana: The seed of the strangler fig starts life as an epiphyte high in the trees, borne by birds and monkeys which eat the fig fruit. The seedling fig sends down long roots to the ground from where it begins to surround the host tree. It grows quickly and eventually suffocates the host: when the host tree dies it leaves an enormous upright strangler with a hollow core. By using an adult tree as its host, the  strangler fig avoids competition for light and nutrients at ground level.
  • American Samoa lianas
  • many lianas around tree trunk
• Climbers: green-stemmed plants such as philodendron that remain in the understory. Many climbers, including the ancestors of the domesticated yams (Africa) and sweet potatoes (South America), store nutrients in roots and tubers.
• Stranglers: these plants begin life as epiphytes in the canopy and send their roots downward to the forest floor. The fig family is well represented among stranglers.
• Heterotrophs: non-photosynthetic plants can live on the forest floor.
  • Parasites derive their nutrients by tapping into the roots or stems of photosynthetic species. Rafflesia arnoldi, a root parasite of a liana, has the world's largest flower, more than three feet in diameter. It produces an odor similar to rotting flesh to attract pollinating insects.

     

  • Saprophytes derive their nutrients from decaying organic matter. Some orchids employ this strategy common to fungi and bacteria.