New York Botanical Gardens Feild Trip by: dalia Pustilnik and Peyton Rosenberg

Featured Plants

  1. Palms
  2. Cacao
  3. Kava
  4. Annatto
  5. Papyrus
  6. Epiphytes
  7. Cinchona
  8. Tree Fern
  9. n/a
  10. Agave
  11. Lithops
  12. Venus Flytrap

Medicinal Plants

Coconut Palm

Cocos nucifera

The fruit of this plant can be used for anti-inflammatory and diuretic medicine.

Saw Palmetto

Serena reprends

The fruit of this plant can be used to decrease symptoms of enlarged prostate.


Digitalis purpurea

The leaves of this plant can be used to treat heart disease by making the heart stronger.


Theobroma cacao

The seeds of this plant can be used to dialate blood vessels.


Aloe vera

The leaves and sap of this plant can be used to calm inflammations and soothe burns.

Leaf Sketches


The Cacao leaf's adaptations are that it has a pointed tip, which helps steer the water towards the end of the leaf, and that it is a large leaf, because its large size helps soak up sunlight is the crowded rainforest.


The Brown-Spines Prickly Pear leaf's adaptations are that it has thick stem, called a succulent, which stores water, and it has spikes, which stop predators from eating it.



This is the Maracaibo Lugnum-Vitae.

The rainforest epiphyte has the adaptation of adventitious roots, which means that its roots can a robs water from the air if they cannot reach the soil.


The desert epiphytes have the same adaptation as the rainforest, but they are called air plants, and, unlike the rainforest epiphytes, they do not need soil to function.

Edible Plants

Coconut Palm

Cocos nucifera

You can eat the fruit and the palm heart of the Coconut Palm


Theobroma cacao

The beans or pods of this plant are used to make chocolate.

Saguro Cactus

Cleistocactus icosagonus

The fruit of this plant is eaten by animals.


Aloe vera

The leaves of this plant are edible.

Orange Tree

Citrus sinensis

The fruit of this tree and be eaten.

Kava Plant


Piper methysticum

The scientific name for kava means intoxicating pepper. The kava plant can be used for relaxation, helping you sleep, and relieving anxiety and stress. The root is the most useful part of the tree as it can be eaten and if you given a kava drink that would mean someone would want to start a friendship with you.

Carnivorous Plant

Venus Flytrap

Dionaea muscipula

The Venus flytrap attracts flys and other prey using it's good smelling secretions, and then snaps its mouth shut trapping and killing the insect. It does this because it lives in a place with poor nutrients, and could not get food otherwise.


Panama Hat-Palm

Carludovica palmata

For the panama hat-palm to be pollinated, a pollinator such as an insect or the wind, carries the pollen to another plant and drops it on the stigma of that plant.

Passion Flower


Just like the panama hat-palm, the passion flower is pollinated when a pollinator takes its pollen grains and places them on the stigma of another plant.


Fuchsia microphylla

Because the Fuchsia is upside down, to be pollinated, the pollen must fall out of the plant and is carried by the wind onto the stigma of another plant.

Desert Flower


Crassula sarmentosa

The Crassula flower was different than the flowers in the rainforest because all of the flowers are closer together and more bunched up, as opposed to the flowers in the rainforest, which were spread out, and had one or two buds per stalk.



Swietenia macrofila

It takes five mohagony trees to make one dresser.



Chondrodendron tomentosum

The curare plant is used to relax muscles. Doctors use the plant to paralyze muscles without stopping the heart, and Hunters use it on the tip of their arrows to sedate the animal they are hunting.

Layers of the Rainforest

Emergent Layer

This is the tallest layer of the rainforest. The trees in the emergent layer break through the blanket of trees, hence the name emergent.

Canopy Layer

This layer is so full of vegetation that some scientists only study the canopy layer. The leaves of all of the trees are so thick that they form a roof, which prevent water and sunlight from reaching plants below.

Understory Layer

This layer is made up of small trees and shrubs, and is usually dimly lit, as the light is blocked by the canopy layer, and is typically humid, because the water cannot evaporate, as the canopy layer is blocking the distance upwards.

Forest Floor

This is the ground layer of the rainforest. The Forest Floor does not have many nutrients, because there is no decaying matter that can pass through in order to enrich the soil, and if they do reach the ground, the matter is either eaten by insects and animals, or washed away by the rain.

Climbing Plant

Preuss' strophanthus

Strophanthus preussii

The Preuss' strophanthus uses its tendrils to latch around objects to climb up.



Anemia phyllitidis

The Anemia moss is so small because it does not have vascular tissues, which means that it does not have stems or roots, which help structure the plant upward.

Blond Tree Fern

Blond Tree Fern

Ciotium glaucum

The Blond Tree Fern is a seedles plant. We know this because it is a fern, and all ferns are seedless, and reproduce use with spores instead of seeds.

Lord of the Rings Plant


Jade Plant

Crassula ovata

Created By
Dalia Pustilnik


Created with images by Melody_Ann_Crespo - "New York Botanical Garden, Bronx" • Marie Hale - "Foxglove" • Michael Khor - "A majestic mahogany tree."

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