Producers

A producer is a plant. Producers create their own food through photosynthesis. 70% of the producers in a tropical rainforest are trees. Tropical rainforests have more kinds of trees than any other area in the world. 1/4 of all the medicines we use come from rainforest producers. Curare is used as an anesthetic and to relax muscles during surgery. It grows as a large liana, or vine, found in the canopy of the South American rainforest. Some Indians in South America crush and cook the roots and stems, and add other plants
and venomous animals, mixing it until it becomes a light syrup. They call this mixture "ampi", or "curaré", which they use on the tip of their arrows and darts to hunt wild animals. Crude curare is a dark brown or black mass with a sticky to hard consistency. The name comes from the Indian word meaning "poison." Jambu is a small, crisp and mildly sweet, watery fruit. It grows naturally from southern India to eastern Malaya. It is part of the myrtle family and is a small tree or large shrub that grows to 10 or 20 ft. The curare and the jambu are only 2 types out of thousands of types of plants that live in the rainforest. Most of the trees in the rainforest have straight trunks that don't branch out for 100 ft. or more. There is no point in growing branches below the canopy where there is little light. Therefore, many of the trees in a tropical rainforest have smooth, thin bark because there is no need to protect them from water loss or freezing temperatures. The bark of different species is so similar that it is difficult to identify a tree by its bark. Often, a tree can only be identified by their flowers.