The mossy forest is a natural environment that grows only at the highest elevations of Cameron Highlands and other mountain ranges across Malaysia. At such heights, low-level clouds in the sky, driven by winds, blanket the forests with constant mist and moisture, creating an ideal biotope for moss, ferns, lichen and orchids. This moist tropical evergreen forest is also a rich repository for a unique set of montane creatures, encompassing insects, snakes, frogs, birds and mammals - that thrive nowhere else but in this chilly atmosphere. Visitors can explore the mossy forest through a boardwalk that begins 2km before the peak of Mount Brinchang.
The series of wooden platforms winds for about 150m through the mossy forest but is slippery and missing a few planks. Tread carefully as you explore this strange environment, filled with oak trees with stunted stumps, wrinkled leaves and gnarled branches that clump together, forming dense crowns that protrude furiously from the ground like mushrooms. As you turn around, look at the rich layers of moss that drape the tree trunks and buttresses, infusing them with a soft, green appearance.
Meanwhile, vines, orchids, pitcher plants and other fascinating epiphytes hang loosely from the canopy, perched silently on branches and stems in this chillingly quiet labyrinth. Venturing below the boardwalk to step on the forest floor, visitors will soon discover its moist peat-like texture, each step leaving deep water-filled imprints on the soil. At the end of the walk, a trail starts towards Gunung Irau, the highest mountain in Cameron Highlands.
Cloud forests, also sometimes called fog forests:
- Are generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and vegetation, in which case they are also referred to as mossy forests. Mossy forests usually develop on the saddles of mountains, where moisture introduced by settling clouds is more effectively retained.
- Dependent on local climate, which is affected by the distance to the sea, the exposition and the latitude (from 23°N to 25°S), the altitude varies from 500 m to 4000 m above sea level. Typically, there is a relatively small band of altitude in which the atmospheric environment is suitable for cloud forest development. This is characterized by persistent fog at the vegetation level, resulting in the reduction of direct sunlight and thus of evapotranspiration. Within cloud forests, much of the precipitation is in the form of fog drip, where fog condenses on tree leaves and then drips onto the ground below.
- Annual rainfall can range from 500 to 10,000 mm/year and mean temperature between 8 to 20°C.
- While cloud forest today is the most widely used term, in some regions, these ecosystems or special types of cloud forests are called mossy forest, elfin forest, montane thicket, and dwarf cloud forest.
- The definition of cloud forest can be ambiguous, with many countries not using the term (preferring such terms as Afromontane forest and upper montane rain forest, montane laurel forest, or more localised terms such as the Bolivian yungas, and the laurisilva of the Atlantic Islands), and occasionally subtropical and even temperate forests in which similar meteorological conditions occur are considered to be cloud forests.
- Only 1% of the global woodland is covered by cloud forests.
- Important areas of cloud forest are in Central and South America, East and Central Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua-New Guinea, and in the Caribbean.
- Although far from being universally accepted as true cloud forests, several forests in temperate regions have strong similarities with tropical cloud forests. The term is further confused by occasional reference to cloud forests in tropical countries as "temperate" due to the cooler climate associated with these misty forests.