Lianas

Lianas, a term first used in the French colonies, in the form lianes (from lier, to bind), for the woody, climbing, and twining plants which abound in tropical forests. Such plants are comparatively rare in colder climates, although the honeysuckles and some species of Clematis afford familiar examples of them; but the lianas of tropical countries overtop the tallest trees, descend again to the ground in vast festoons, pass from one tree to another, and bind the whole forest together in a maze of living network, and often by cables as thick as those of a man-of-war. Many parts of the forest, as in the alluvial regions of the Amazons and Orinoco, thus become impenetrable without the aid of the hatchet, and the beasts which inhabit them either pass through narrow covered paths, kept open by continual use, or from bough to bough far above the ground. Many lianas—as some of the species of Wrightia—become tree-like in the thickness of their stems, and often kill by constriction the trees which originally supported them; and when these have decayed the convolutions of the lianas exhibit a wonderful mass of confusion magnificent in the luxuriance of foliage and flowers. No tropical flowers excel in splendour those of some lianas. Among them are found also some valuable medicinal plants, as sarsaparilla (Smilax, order Liliaceæ) and vanilla (order Orchidaceæ) are lianas. Botanically considered, lianas belong to orders which are often quite different. Tropical plants of this description are seldom seen in our hothouses owing to the difficulty of their cultivation.