Marvels of the Universe 



561 



Photo 5»] 



[/. //. Crabtree. 



A BRAZILIAN LIANA. 



This section shows one of tKc remarkable ways in which 

 these Bush-ropes add to their thickness without losing pliability. 



they can understand, but how the fixed and 

 inanimate trees should or can do so appears to 

 them impossible. 



Go into a pine-wood or a beech-wood in our 

 own country, and you may see things on a 

 small scale that will help you to realize the 

 position. In the pine-wood the straight, bare 

 shafts of the trees rise to a great height, and 

 the foliage is almost confined to their tops, 

 where it forms a dense, unbroken canopy. 

 There is plenty of light down below, but it is 

 not active, life-sustaining light. Only fungi and 

 a few mosses can live there, and the floor is 

 covered with the monotonous carpet of dead 

 pine-leaves. Such light as there is has had to 

 pass through the chinks in the canopy and the 

 hfe-giving violet rays have been filtered out 

 and absorbed by the canopy. 



In the tropical forest you will find, in 

 addition to the great trees, a complete tangle 

 (Magnified.) of these Liauas, or bush-ropes, climbing up the 



trees and stretching across in lines and loops. Look at our photograph on page 559, where a 

 stream rushing through the forest lets a little light in on either side. Many of the bush-ropes that 

 feel its influence have worked out to it as being nearer than the light above the tree-canopy. 

 Some of them have then attempted to rise ; but being too slender, have fallen athwart the 

 stream, and tangling and matting with others, have formed a natural bridge — the kind 

 that probably gave man his idea for the first suspension bridge. Now these bush-ropes in 

 many cases are not true climbers, like the hop or the convolvulus — their parents were trees — and 

 they did not all start life in the ground. Some of these Lianas increase their strength without losing 

 suppleness by developing longitudinal corrugations — as we strengthen our girders without adding 

 materially to their weight — and this may be seen in the cross-sections photographed on this page. 



One of these Lianas, the Clusia — 

 known in South America as the Wild 

 Fig, but not a fig of any kind — in 

 some respects resembles the banyan. 

 Despairing of its progeny reaching to 

 the light from the forest floor, the 

 Clusia has learned what sort of outfit to 

 give its seeds to afford some of them 

 at least a chance of producing a suc- 

 cessful plant. It embeds them in a 

 pulpy coat that is attractive to birds, 

 and the birds, carrying them away, 

 eat the pulp and leave the seed stick- 

 ing to an upper branch, where, on 

 germinating, its first leaves can get 

 sufficient light to work and feed the 

 seedling. The young Clusia sends its 

 roots down the trunk of the tree, 



I'holo i!i'\ [J. II. Crabtree. 



A BRAZILIAN LIANA. 



.^ section cut across one of these Bush-ropes and magnified. The 

 circular centre shows that originally it was round in outline, but by 

 pressure in twining it has grown in two directions only. 



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