Here is a little plant that starts it’s life high up in the tree
tops, where it can find more light than the dark understory of
the rainforest. As it grows though, soon getting enough water
becomes limiting factor, and the plant will drop a shoot to the
ground. Matt Ogburn, a graduate student in Erika Edwards’ lab at
Brown University, describes this little plant, the strangler
fig, and explains how it eventually grows to take over the whole
host tree and strangle it to death. Artwork and editing by
Sophia Tintori. Original score by Amil Byleckie. Thanks to Jo
Dery for use of her studio. Video released under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.