PDF - Wallace Online

246 TROPICAL NATUREmight have been multiplied many times over by the introductionof articles whose names would be known only to thoseinterested in specialarts or sciences ;but imperfect as it is, itwill serve to afford a notion of the value of this vast treasurehouse,which is as yet but very partially explored.The Climbing Plants of the Equatorial ForestsNext to the trees themselves the most conspicuous andremarkable feature of the tropical forests is the profusion ofwoody creepers and climbers that everywhere meet the eye.They twist around the slenderer stems, they drop downpendent from the branches, they stretch tightly from treeto tree, they hang looped in huge festoons from bough tobough, they twist in great serpentine coils or lie in entangledmasses on the ground. Some are slender, smooth, and rootlike;others are rugged or knotted often ; they are twinedtogether into veritable cables ;some are flat like ribands,others are curiously waved and indented. Where they springfrom or how they growis at first a complete puzzle. Theypass overhead from tree to tree, they stretch in tight cordagelike the rigging of a ship from the top of one- tree to the baseof another, and the upper regions of the forest often seemfull of them without our being able to detect any earthgrowingstem from which they arise. The conclusion is atlength forced upon us that these woody climbers must possessthe two qualities of very long life and almost indefinite longitudinalgrowth, for by these suppositions alone can we explaintheir characteristic features. The growth of climbers, evenmore than all other plants, isupward towards the light. Inthe shade of the forest they rarely or never flower, and seldomeven produce foliage, but when they have reached the summitof the tree that supports them, they expand under the genialinfluence of light and air, and often cover their foster-parentwith blossoms not its own. Here, as a rule, the climber'sgrowth would cease ;but the time comes when the supportingtree rots and falls, and the creeper comes with it in torn andtangled masses to the ground. But though its foster-parentis dead it has itself received no permanent injury, but shootsout again till it finds a fresh support, mounts another tree,and again puts forth its leaves and flowers. In time the old