EPIPHYTE, or AIR-PLANT, a plant attached to a tree or other support, or ganic or inorganic, living or dead, but from which it obtains no nutriment. The term air plant has been popularly applied because these plants are typically neither parasitic, saprophytic nor terrestrial, but depend upon the dust which lodges around them and upon the water of dew and rain. Strictly speaking, they are not air plants, because this term implies no other source of life than air. Besides the typical epiphytes, which have representatives in many plant fami lies, particularly the tropical orchids, bromelias and ferns, there are many forms which are only partially epiphytic. In structure many of them exhibit adaptations for checking transpiration and for securing even minute quantities of water from the air or from objects to which they are attached. (See PITCHER-PLANTS). Others (cer tain orchids) have storage organs which are usually specialized stems. Some have roots which serve only to anchor the plants to their support. In these, which are the most typical, the absorption of food takes place in the leaves and other green parts. Others are only epiphytic
at first, since they later develop true roots which obtain food from the soil. The home of the largest number of epiphytes is in the moist re gion covered by tropical forests, the trees of which are often so covered with these plants that their branches are wholly concealed by a very miscellaneous growth. In the temperate and colder climates the epiphytal forms are con fined almost wholly to lower orders of plant life such as liverworts, mosses, alga and lichens. These are also represented in the tropics, some of them even becoming attached to leaves of higher plants. Many of the flowering epiphytes are cultivated in greenhouses for .ornament. Among the favorites are various species of Nepenthes (q.v.), orchids and bromelias. One of the best-known American species, common in the southern United States, is the so-called Florida or Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) of the natural order Bromeliacea'.