THE LIANAS 



from SO many different families of plants ! Often one feels as though 

 here a superabundant imagination had been put to the test — had 

 been given the task of creating climbing plants which should yet be 

 members of families which to all appearances were as ill adapted as 

 possible to the production of climbers. Lianas had to be provided, 

 first and foremost, with organs which would enable them to twine 

 and cling, and these had to be developed from organs already 

 existing ; and since the organs selected by the various types of plant 

 differed very greatly, those were adapted which were most suitable 

 for the purposes of the liana. It is for this reason we find that some 

 lianas anchor themselves to the trees by their leaves, others by their 

 roots, and yet others by their stems. If we pass the lianas in review, 

 we soon seem to have exhausted every possibility — and then we are 

 suddenly surprised by some fresh solution of the problem. 



Goethe was one of the first writers to treat of the metamorphoses 

 of the organs of plants for the performance of new functions. Since 

 his day a whole science has come into existence, which seeks to 

 explain (for example) how a green leaf, under the influence of 

 external and internal conditions, may become something quite 

 different: a thorn, a tendril, a pitcher to catch insects, a coloured 

 petal. 



Who could imagine a fern as a liana? And yet there are climbing 

 ferns ; but what queer-looking things they are ! In the forest of Alto 

 da Serra I examined these curious plants with amazement. The whole 

 frond — so broad and beautifully formed in ordinary ferns — has been 

 reduced to the stele and the midrib, and a few small lateral pinnules 

 which spring from the midrib at some distance from one another. 

 But these comparatively frail and elastic filaments grow unchecked 

 — I measured some which were over thirty feet in length — and twine 

 themselves round the trunks of other trees. Not far from the cHmbing 

 ferns I found the climbing bamboo, which the Brazilians know as 

 Tacuare. At intervals of about a foot the long, twining stems bore 

 little spherical bunches of leaves. This symmetry was very pleasing, 

 particularly when the liana was suspended from tree to tree. Still 

 more attractive was the climbing grass, which wound itself round the 

 trees, the bright green grass-blades hanging down all over the twining 

 stems. But in forcing one's way through the forest one had to beware 

 of the sharp cutting edges of these blades. 



The palms too include climbing species. My acquaintance with 

 these dates from my very first excursion into the forests of Ceylon. 

 Suddenly my hat was snatched from my head, as though by a spectral 



91 



