

LIANAS— CLIMBING -TREES— EriPHYTES— ORCHIDS. 535 



ropes, or Lianas, that contribute so largely to the impenetrability of the forests, hold 

 a conspicuous rank. Often three or four bushropes, like strands in a cable, join tree 

 to tree, and branch to branch ; others, descending from on high, take root as soon as 

 their extremity touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays supporting the 

 mainmast of a line-of-battle ship ; while others send out parallel, oblique, horizontal, 

 and perpendicular shoots in all directions. Frequently trees above a hundred feet 

 high, uprooted by the storm, are stopped in their fall by these amazing cables of Na- 

 ture, and are thus enabled to send forth vigorous shoots, though far from their perpen- 

 dicular, with their trunks inclined to every degree from the meridian to the horizon. 

 Their heads remain firmly supported by the bushropes ; many of their roots soon refix 

 themselves in the earth, and frequently a strong shoot will sprout out perpendicularly 

 from near the root of the reclined trunk, and in time become a stately tree. No less 

 pliable than tough, the lianas of the western hemisphere are used by the Brazilians as 

 cordage to fasten the rafters of their houses, in the same manner as the equally flexible 

 ratans are employed throughout the East Indian world. 



The enormous Climbing Trees, that stifle the life of the mightiest giants of the forest, 

 ofi"er a still more wonderful spectacle. At first, these emblems of ingratitude grow 

 straight upwards like any feeble shrub, but as soon as they have found a support in 

 other trees, they begin to extend over their surface ; for, while the stems of other 

 plants generally assume a cylindrical form, these climbers have the peculiarity of di- 

 vestino- themselves of their rind when brought into contact with an extraneous body, 

 and of spre*ading over it, until they at length enclose it in a tubular mass. When, 

 during this process, the powers of the original root are weakened, the trunk sends 

 forth new props to restore the equilibrium ; and thus this tough and hardy race con- 

 tinually acquires fresh strength for the ruin of its neighbors. 



Several species of the fig-trees are peculiarly remarkable for this distinctive prop- 

 erty, and from the facility with which their seeds take root where there is a sufficiency 

 of moisture to permit of germination, are formidable assailants of ancient monuments. 

 Sir Emerson Tennent mentions one which had fixed itself on the walls of a ruined 

 edifice at Polanarrua, and formed one of the most remarkable objects of the place, its 

 roots streaming downwards over the walls as if their wood had once been fluid, and 

 following every sinuosity of the building and terraces till they reached the earth. 



On the borders of the Rio Guama, the celebrated botanist. Von Martins, saw whole 

 groups of Macauba palms encased by fig-trees that formed thick tubes round the shafts 

 of the palms, whose noble crowns rose high above them ; and a similar spectacle occurs 

 in India and Ceylon, when the Tamils look with increased veneration on their sacred 

 pippul thus united in marriage with the palmyra. After the incarcerated trunk has 

 been stifled and destroyed, the grotesque form of the parasite, tubular, cork-screw like, 

 or otherwise fantastically contorted, and frequently admitting the light through inter- 

 stices like loopholes in a turret, continues to maintain an independent existence among 

 the straight-stemmed trees of the forest, — the image of an eccentric genius in the 

 midst of a group of steady citizens. 



Like the mosses and lichens of our woods. Epiphytes of endless variety and almost 



. inconceivable size and luxuriance (ferns, hromelias, tillandsias, orchids, and pothos) 



cover in the tropical zone the trunks and branches of the forest trees, forming hanging 



gardens, far more splendid than those of ancient Babylon. While the Orchids are 



