The Mountain Plateau Virgin Forest on the summit of Tianmen Mountain has been called the second national forest park of Zhangjiajie (the first of which is Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, a subsection of Wulingyuan Scenic Area). It is a primitive forest located on a plateau and comprises many rare plant species, including numerous medicinal herbs. With its over 1000 different herb species, the virgin forest serves as a science-and-education base for the entire region, and is touted as a good, local example of ecotourism, albeit, not of the officially sponsored international ecotourism (The International Ecotourism Society, or TIES) variety.
While the trees here may not attain the full size and height of trees growing in more fertile locations, they are not bonsai-sized, though many, if not most, of the trees growing on the western side of the mountain are indeed in a dwarf, or bonsai, version, due probably to the shallowness of the soil layer and the resulting paucity of nutrients there, and maybe the peculiar combination of sunlight plus precipitation – and possibly even the wind pattern – plays a role (life is pervasive, even tenacious, but it most certainly adapts, one might say). Two of the state-protected trees here are the Dove Tree (Davidia involucrata) and the Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), one of only three redwood types found on the planet, and belonging to the same subfamily (Sequoioideae) as the Giant California Redwood tree.
Trees provide home to birds aplenty, and there are plenty of them in Mountain Plateau Virgin Forest, plus there are many other small animals that thrive here, though birds tend to dominate. The excesses of commercial logging will probably never pose a problem anywhere on Tianmen Mountain since the economic conditions necessary for the exploitation of commercial logging will surely never be met here, thankfully.
