liana

plural lianas

1. biologyA climbing woody vine, usually tropical.

   Many of the older trees presented a very curious appearance from the tresses of a liana hanging from their boughs, and resembling bundles of hay.

   1839, Robert FitzRoy, Phillip Parker King, Charles Darwin, chapter II, in Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the Years 1826 and 1836, […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC

   4 more examples

   1884, Achilles Daunt, Frank Redcliffe: A story of travel and adventure in the forests of Venezuela (A Book for Boys), London: T. Nelson & Sons, Chapter 5, p. 99, Flowering lianas hung in long streaming lines from the outstretched boughs and dipped their pendulous bouquets in the water of the igarape, which reflected the cloudless blue of the sky.

   Allow friendly natives to walk in front of you on the track. They have sharp eyes for pitfalls, snakes, hornets, and stinging plants. They will cut the lianas and thorny trailers. They like to do it.

   1943 April 4, Allied Geographical Section, Southwest Pacific Area, Getting About in New Guinea, page 6

   They left the drive and stood among the wild tannia under the saman tree. Mrs Tulsi held a liana and offered it to Mr Biswas. While he felt it, she held a thinner liana and pulled it down. ‘As strong as rope,’ she said. ‘The children could skip with this.’

   1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, published 2001, Part Two, Chapter 3

   We climbed to the top of a tree with a trunk that was as hard as an oak and topped with bamboo canes that held up fan-shaped palm leaves quivering in the breeze, fully illuminated by the sun; cherries as big as watermelons hung from the end of the bamboo shoots entwined with beautiful lianas that swayed like living ropes and on which we swung most pleasurably.

   2026 [1979], Copi, “The Magic Mushrooms”, in Kit Schluter, transl., City of Rats, New Directions Publishing, →ISBN, page 104

1. A female given name from Latin, derived from Juliana or Eliana