the.com/cloud forest
A forest so high it drinks its water straight from the fog.
means A tropical or subtropical mountain forest that sits inside a persistent layer of low cloud, so trees pull much of their moisture directly from mist rather than rainfall.
from A straightforward descriptive compound — 'cloud' plus 'forest' — that arose in English-language ecology and biogeography writing as scientists needed a plain name for the high-elevation forests they found perpetually wrapped in cloud cover. No hidden word-root drama here: the name is as literal as the fog is thick, simply translating what explorers and naturalists actually saw and described in Latin American, African, and Southeast Asian mountains.
- water source
- Trees comb moisture directly out of passing clouds
- elevation band
- Typically forms between 1,000 and 3,500 meters
- biodiversity
- Covers under 1% of land, hosts outsized species counts
- climate risk
- Warming air lifts cloud base, drying forests below