LIANAS, a term first used in the French colonies, but adopted by English, German. and other travelers, to designate the woody, climbing, and twining plants which abound in tropical forests, and constitute a remarkable and ever-varying feature of the scene. Such plants are comparatively rare in colder climates, although the honeysuckles and some species of clematis afford familiar examples of them; but as these often over top the hedges or bushes in which they grow, and fall down again by.the weiLrlit of their leaves as their stems elongate, so the lianas of tropical countries overtop the tallest trees, descend again to the ground in vast festoons, pass from one tree to another, and bind the whole forest together in a maze of living network, and often by cables as thick as those of a man-of-war. Many parts of the forest—as in the alluvial regions of the Ama zon and Orinoco—thus become impenetrable without the aid of the hatchet, and the beasts which inhabit them either pass through narrow covered paths, kept open by con tinual use, or from bough to bough far above the ground. Many lianas—as sonic of the
species of Wrightia—become tree-like in the thickness of their stems, and often kill by constriction the trees which originally supported them; and when these have decayed, the convolutions of the lianas exhibit a wonderful mass of confusion magnificent in the luxuriance of foliage and flowers. No tropical flowers excel in splendor those of some liauas. Among them are found also sonic valuable medicinal plants, as sarsaparilla. The rattans and vanilla are lianas. Botanically considered, lianas belong to natural orders the most different. Tropical plants of this description are seldom to be seen in our hot-houses, owing to the difficulty of their cultivation.
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