It's a real jungle out there... trees race up to the light, some growing several metres a year, climbers hitch a ride, and epiphytes - orchids, bromeliads (spiky rosettes), aroids and ferns - sunbathe high in the living skyscrapers. Different species in different rainforests often look similar. Trees have stilts or buttress-roots for support in thin soil, leaves are large and shiny with gutters and 'drip' tips to shed excess water, and on the forest floor leaves have purple undersides, which act like reflecting mirrors, to make the most of the 2 per cent of light that reaches them. They bounce it back up to get a double dose. Many of these plants now live in our homes, propagated as house plants. Rain makes rainforests and rainforests make rain: In the tropical rainforests water travels up inside the trees, makes clouds, rains back down, and is taken back up by the trees. It can cycle through seven times before it reaches the sea.

Store cupboard: The rainforests are one of the largest stores of carbon on earth, gathered from the carbon dioxide they take in from the air as they grow. Weather machine: Changes in areas of rainforest bring climate change; whether it gets hotter, colder, dryer or wetter is still under debate- but we do know that local changes have global consequences. Forever green? Rainforests are cleared for agriculture, mining, development and timber. But they can also re-grow or be replanted and managed sustainably for the future. Can we win the forests back?

Information kindly provided by The Eden Project. Text copyright the Eden Project 2003