An introduction to tropical rain forests

Abstract Rain forests have crossed a threshold of perception. Reports on television, radio, or in the press of another piece of destruction, or a new message of gloom for the planet, have become commonplace. The public firmly believes that something nasty is happening down on the Equator, even that the once vast Amazon rain forests have all but disappeared. Man’s presentday impact on tropical rain forests is, however, just the last stanza of a saga stretching back into the past beyond the beginning of written history. European knowledge of tropical forests began when Alexander the Great crossed the Khyber Pass in 327 BC, into the Punjab, to establish the eastern limits of his short-lived empire on the banks of the Indus. ‘His army saw mangrove swamps (which upset conventional views on trees), jackfruit, mangoes, bananas, cotton, and banyans-which upset everybody’s views on what roots are supposed to do.’