THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 77 



the summits of which, the crown spreads out in verdant 

 plumes." 



The stems themselves are curious objects, twisted like 

 the strands of a cable, coiling like a cork-screw, plaited or 

 flattened like ribbons, pitted or formed into elegant steps, the 

 so-called monkey-ladders. Nor do those frisky athletes neg- 

 lect them as they scamper about the trees in wild play, using, 

 in American forests only, their prehensile tail as a fifth and 

 most important hand. 



Among the massed lianes, is the place to look for aerial 

 orchids, most marvelous of all flowers in form and color. Here 

 too, ferns love to find their "coign of vantage" where, as 

 Bunyan says, the "air is delicate." 



Kerner regrets that "the sweet word liane" has not found 

 its way into botanical language, and, practically it has. It 

 orignated, he says in the French Antilles, but has never found 

 its way into most languages. We have seen that it refers to 

 a type, not to any definite family or association of plants. In 

 this view we find some of our own temperate plants falling 

 under the head of lianes, as the very pretty Roxbury wax- 

 work, some jessamines, barberries, and roses. In the tropics, 

 the Bignoniads or plants of the trumpet-creeper family are 

 very typical lianes ; so also are certain pipe-vines. These may 

 form huge, stranded cables. Thin cross-sections of small 

 twigs of those, display under the microscope most exquisite 

 patterns and designs. Certain aroids, plants of the Calla fam- 

 ily produce long trailing roots, as we know does also the ban- 

 yan, but these are not lianes. To be such the stem must trail 

 with an upward habit. Such roses as the now familiar crim- 

 son rambler, might be called lianes, while our Virginia-creeper, 

 growing by an attachment to a support would not. 



Providence, R. I. 



