Dangerous Plants in the Amazon Rainforest

Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest is as beautiful as it is dangerous. Its biodiversity is vast. As many as 80,000 different Amazonian plant species exist, with more than 40,000 of those species playing crucial roles in regulating the global climate and maintaining the local water cycle. With such diverse ecosystems, there will obviously be some poisonous plants.

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon have many different uses for these plants. Some of these plants are used as curare, the term for various paralyzing poisons used to tip arrows for hunting. Others have significant medicinal properties. Some plants are used for both purposes, since often the difference between medicine and poison is the dose.

That’s just plants; there is also an endless variety of animal species in the Amazon. Over 3000 fish species live in the Amazon River, such as electric eels, to name one of the stranger fish. As much as 15% of the world’s bird and butterfly species live in the Amazon, and estimates suggest there may be as many as 2.5 million different insect species just in the Amazon Jungle.

The sheer biodiversity of the Amazon makes it one of our most critical natural resources. Deforestation is a constant threat to tropical rainforests across the globe. Rainforest biomes are often called Earth’s lungs because they are crucial in the global ecosystem. Deforestation accelerates climate change, which creates a cycle that further destroys the vital biodiversity of the Amazon.

Medicinal Plants

It is legitimately impossible to know just how many different species of Amazonian plants could have medicinal benefits. Only a small portion of the forest has been catalogued and explored in a modern scientific context. Due to how remote the deeper parts of the jungle can be, most of what has been explored is along the Amazon River or part of the Amazon River Basin. 

Unfortunately, a lot of knowledge of the medicinal benefits of the plants in the Amazon is being lost. South American indigenous tribes can lose touch with their medicinal knowledge due to cultural erosion, such as missionaries instilling a sense of shame around traditional medicinal practices, calling them “witchcraft,” so younger members of these tribes are not stepping in to replace elder shamans.

Such significant biodiversity means it would be impossible to list even a fraction of the medicinal plants found in the Amazon. For every Angel’s Trumpet that we know about for its pain-relieving effects, there are an unknowable number of plants in the Brazilian Amazon that we may never discover.

Poisonous Plants

Not every plant has dual uses. Some are just incredibly toxic, like the manchineel tree species. Every part of the plant is poisonous, and they can grow to be nearly 50 feet tall. An arrow tipped with manchineel sap killed the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León.

Most poisonous species of plants, however, do have medicinal uses. The alkaloids in the Strychnos genus can be used to poison arrow tips for hunting or as sedatives and anti-convulsives. However, the medicinal dose is dangerously close to the toxic dose.

Carnivorous Plants

Plants that eat meat are among the most interesting adaptations in the botanical world. South America is home to many carnivorous plants, which may be deadly to many creatures but typically not humans. If there is an Audrey II out there, we haven’t found it yet. 

You can find pitcher plants, sundews, and bladderworts in the Peruvian Amazon. Pitcher plants use pitfall traps, which are a deep cavity filled with digestive liquid, and lure prey with nectar. 

Sundews have tentacles that can feel prey and then curl to bring prey into contact with as many of their stalked glands as possible. This response is incredibly sensitive, and the quickest of the sundews can curl around prey in tenths of a second.

Bladderworts have vacuum-driven bladders, which are known to be the most sophisticated carnivorous trap system in the plant kingdom. Bladderworts pump water out of the mechanism to create a vacuum which is triggered by sensitive antenna to suck prey into the bladder. This happens within as little as a hundredth of a second.

Rainforest plants are equally fascinating and crucial to the entire planet’s ecosystem. We must take care of all of our planet’s biomes, but few are as critical as the Amazon Rainforest.