Amazonia from A to zoo.

• Author: Cohn, Jeffrey P.
• Position: Amazonia exhibit at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.

U.S. zoos do an excellent job of displaying wildlife from Africa, Asia and even North America. But not many focus on South American animals or ecosystems. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., is changing that with a new exhibit on the Amazonian rain forest. In an unusual approach, the Amazonia exhibit seeks to immerse visitors in a living rain forest that focuses on plants not animals. "This is a plant exhibit with animals and people in it," explains Jaren Horsley, the National Zoo's Amazonia curator. "If it had too many animals people would see the plants only as background. When you go to a rain forest, what you see are plants and not animals."

Indeed, the National Zoo's $12 million Amazonia exhibit, which opened to the public November 18, features 1,700 plants from 368 species. Nearly all are native to Brazil. Imagine a lush place where tall trees with majestic leafy canopies obscure the sky above, vine-like bromeliads, some with brilliant red flowers, hang from tree limbs and blooming orchids and dangling fruit dot the shrublike understory. "It smells like a rain forest. It is even growing like a rain forest," says a proud Michael Robinson, the National Zoo's director.

Growing here are mimosa trees, whose dainty leaves curl up when touched; eugenia trees, whose fruit contain 20 percent more vitamin C than oranges, and a 10-foot juvenile rubber tree that could reach 200 feet in height. The rubber and other trees will be trimmed when they reach the building's 53-foot-tall ceiling. Here, too, are plants that have enormous commercial value in South America. They include the avocado, cocoa, papaya and sapedillo, the source of chicle used to make chewing gum. Across a waterfall-fed pool grows the palm-like palmata, whose leaves are dried and used to make Panama hats. Also featured are more than 20 varieties of orchids, the world's most common plant. One variety, the Catasetum barbartum, is popularly known as the "pollen shooter" because it fires a load of sticky pollen on unsuspecting bees that enter the flower in search of nectar.

Despite the focus on Brazilian flora, no Amazon rain forest would be complete without animals. More than two dozen different species of birds fly freely through the 12,000 square-foot building. Titi and Goeldi's monkeys and emperor tamarins dart and dash over tree limbs while two-toed sloths and green iguanas move slowly through the forest...