cloud forest

Word family

• cloud
  nounA1
• forest
  nounA2
• forested
  adjectiveB2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four terms describe places with many trees, but they differ in climate and location. A cloud forest sits on tropical mountains where low cloud keeps everything wet — think of a Costa Rican mountainside covered in mist and moss. A rainforest is warmer and wetter with far more rain falling from above, like the Amazon basin. Jungle suggests a very dense, thick forest at low elevation, often with tangled vines and little direct sunlight. Woodland is the broadest and driest of the four — open, often in temperate climates, with space between trees for sunlight to reach the ground. A sentence like 'We hiked through the cloud forest and saw tiny orchids on every branch' would be misleading if you replaced cloud forest with rainforest, because the setting and the plant life are different.

Common collocations

Etymology

The compound 'cloud forest' combines 'cloud' (from Old English clūd, originally meaning a mass of rock or hill, later extended to sky formations) and 'forest' (from Old French forest via Latin forestis silva, 'an outdoor woodland'). The term was first used by ecologists in the early 20th century to describe high-altitude tropical forests that are regularly covered in clouds, distinguishing them from lower-altitude rainforests.