Lianas are vines that begin life on the ground as small self-supporting shrubs and rely on other plants to reach the light-rich environment of the upper canopy. Because lianas use the architecture of other plants for support, they devote relatively little to structural support and instead allocate more resources to leaf production and stem/root elongation for rapid growth. Since lianas are rooted throughout their lives (unlike other structural parasites like epiphytes and hemiepiphytes), they take nothing from the tree except support.
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