LIANES. 



BY DR. W. W. BAILEY. 



THE Spaniards have a melodious word to designate a pecul- 

 iar type of plant which reaches its highest development 

 in the tropics, though not unknown elsewhere. The beauti- 

 ful name Liane is applied to the trailing plants of quite di- 

 verse families, which, in equatorial forests swing from tree 

 to tree reminding one, according to their size, of the cables 

 or cordage of shipping. 



As a rule these free-growing plants are not parasites, 

 that is, they do not prey upon the other trees or shrubs to 

 which they are attached. The true Liane is not even a climb- 

 er in the botanical significance of that word. It has no ten- 

 drils or prehensile stems or roots of any kind, but, in its 

 effort to lift itself out of the struggle below into light and air, 

 it trails over other plants, or mats itself about them. Thus, 

 while, in a sense, fragile itself, it makes stouter plants sup- 

 port it. Indeed, we somtimes find a mass of lianes complete- 

 ly replacing a tree, which it originally merely embraced. Its 

 Laocoon-like clasp, becoming tighter and tighter, and its 

 dense foliage interfering with the natural display of the trees 

 own vegetation, causes the latter's ultimate enfeeblement and 

 death. These false trees, representing others of an utterly 

 dift'erent nature that have entirely disappeared, often exhibit 

 superb masses of verdure. 



Says Kerner Von IMarilaun. the great Vienna botanist, 

 whose word-pictures are among the most graphic of an}- nat- 

 ural historv writer: 



"Often it happens that the name of a plant affects our 

 imagination by its pleasing or harmonious sound. One asso- 

 ciates with the name not merely the idea of the form of a 

 certain plant, but more than this, its whole surrounding in 

 which it grows and flourishes. One conjures up a picture 



75 



