Warm, wet, and never switched off
Why Does So Much Live in a Rainforest?
A rainforest has no winter, so growth runs every day of the year and every layer of space fills up.
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Step 1 of 5
Nothing there ever stops growing.
A rainforest sits near the equator, where the temperature barely changes and rain falls all year. There is no winter to shut growth down, so plants grow every day of their lives.
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Step 2 of 5
The trees spend the light before it lands.
The tallest trees close over into a roof. Only a few per cent of the sunlight striking the canopy reaches the ground, which makes light the thing everything down there competes for.
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Step 3 of 5
So living space is stacked rather than spread.
One tree is four addresses. Frogs that never touch the ground, ants that farm a single branch, plants that grow on other plants. Each layer is a different world with its own residents and its own weather.
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Step 4 of 5
The soil is poorer than you would guess.
Warm wet ground rots fallen leaves in weeks, and heavy rain washes what they release straight out. Almost everything is held in the living wood and leaves, not in the ground.
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Step 5 of 5
Which is why clearing one does not leave farmland.
Cut and burn the trees and the store goes with them. The ash feeds a crop or two, then the rain has taken it and what is left is thin ground.
The short version
A rainforest is crowded because warmth and rain never pause, so growth runs all year and life stacks into layers — but the richness is in the trees, not the soil.
Try it yourself
Look at any houseplant sold as good for a dark corner. Most of them are understorey plants, built for a floor that only ever sees a few per cent of the light.