Plants as agents of damage and disease may be divided into those larger forms which as weeds, epiphytes and so forth, do injury by dominating and shading more delicate species, or by gradually exhausting the soil, &c., and true parasites which actually live on and in the tissues of the plants.
Coelogyninae, 7 genera, mostly epiphytes, and inhabitants of tropical Asia.
The density of the forest is greatly augmented by the cipos, or lianas, which overgrow the largest trees to their tops, and by a profusion of epiphytes which cover the highest branches.
Its forests are not composed of one or a few dominating species, as in the cold temperate zone, but of countless genera and species closely interwoven together - a confused mass of giant trees, lianas and epiphytes struggling to reach the sunlight.
The greater number of them are epiphytes or plants that grow on others without absorbing nourishment from them, and heat and moisture afford all or nearly all the nourishment they require.
An epiphytic fungus is not necessarily a parasite, however, as many saprophytes (moulds, &c.) germinate and develop a loose mycelium on living leaves, but only enter and destroy the tissues after the leaf has fallen; in some cases, however, these saprophytic epiphytes can do harm by intercepting light and air from the leaf (Fumago, &c.), and such cases make it difficult to draw the line between saprophytism and parasitism.
In epiphytic forms the rhizoids of the epiphyte often penetrate into the tissue of the host, and certain epiphytes are not known to occur excepting in connexion with a certain host; but to what extent, if any, there is a partial parasitism in these cases has not been ascertained.
A large number of algae again live as epiphytes or endophytes.
The vesicles of Fucaceae and Laminariaceae prevent the sinking of the bulkier forms. But why certain Fucaceae favour certain zones in the littoral region, why certain epiphytes are confined to certain hosts, why Red and Brown Algae are not better represented in fresh water or Green Algae in salt, - these are problems to which it is difficult to find a ready answer.
Pendulous epiphytes occur in the latter genus.
The vegetation of the forests, the abundant epiphytes, the treemosses, the filmy ferns and the viviparous character of many of the ferns, show clearly how abundant the rainfall is in the eastern forest region.
Thus there are a few 3 Ferns which climb, others are .8 water plants, while many, especially those which live as epiphytes, are more or less xerophytic. Some of the epiphytic forms (Polypodium quercifolium, Platycerium) have strongly dimorphic leaves, the sterile leaves serving in some cases to catch falling debris, and thus to provide the plant with soil.