Climbing plants, including lianas, represent a fascinating component of the ecology of tropical forests. This book focuses on the climbing plants of West African forests. Based on original research, it presents information on the flora (including a checklist), diversity (with overviews at several levels of integration), ecology (distribution, characteristics in relation to environment, their role in forest ecosystems) and ethnobotany. Forestry aspects, such as their impact on tree growth and development, and the effects of forestry interventions on climbers are also covered.

This book brings out the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on the taxonomy, biodiversity, and ecology of climbers in India. Climbing is one of the principal plant growth habits that have long attracted the interests of ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Climbing plants can add significantly to the species richness of many tropical forests ecosystems, yet they receive relatively lesser attention than trees in ecological studies. The difficulties in taxonomic assertions and lack of standard methodologies overlook climbers in plant inventories, resulting in the underrepresentation of climbers in regional floras. There is a growing consensus about the increasing abundance of climbers and their multifaceted role in tropical forests worldwide. Therefore, it is essential to understand the taxonomic diversity and ecology of climbers at the regional scale to substantiate our efforts towards constructing a global climber database, which serves as a reference for fundamental research in climber ecology and evolution. This book is of interest to biodiversity researchers, taxonomists, ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Field biologists, forest managers, and naturalists will also find this a useful read.

This book “Biodiversity of lianas” under the series “Sustainable development and Biodiversity” is unique as it covers a wide array of topics in this subject covering all continents and will constitute a valuable reference material for students, researchers and forest managers who are concerned with biodiversity, forest ecology and sustainable development of forest resources. It contains peer-reviewed chapters from leading academicians and researchers around the world in the field of Plant Ecology, Taxonomy and related areas of Biodiversity Science but, centered on Lianology and includes original research articles, case studies and reviews (regional and global) in biodiversity, ecology and phytogeography and conservation of lianas from temperate, sub-tropical and tropical forests. The interest in lianas has increased over the last two decades. The ultimate goal of this book is to provide an insight into the patterns of liana diversity, distribution, the role of lianas in structuring forest community, and functional ecology (carbon uptake, ecosystem services, dynamics and invasion), biotechnological tool for conservation of lianas and finally summarizes the significance and the need for conservation of lianas in the changing global environmental scenario.

A guide to the identification of all the woody plants (c. 2,250 species in 740 genera) of the forest region of West Africa called 'Upper Guinea', between Togo and Senegal. Upper Guinea is one of the world's most important centres of biodiversity, from the mountain forests of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, to the lowland evergreen, and semideciduous forests widespread also in Ghana and Ivory Coast. This comprehensively illustrated guide will play a vital supportive role in the challenge of sustainable development within the forest region of West Africa, helping to promote best practice in the management of its plants and forests.

Lianas are woody vines that were the focus of intense study by early ecologists, such as Darwin, who devoted an entire book to the natural history of climbing plants. Over the past quarter century, there has been a resurgence in the study of lianas, and liana are again recognized as important components of many forests, particularly in the tropics. The increasing amount of research on lianas has resulted in a fundamentally deeper understanding of liana ecology, evolution, and life-history, as well as the myriad roles lianas play in forest dynamics and functioning. This book provides insight into the ecology and evolution of lianas, their anatomy, physiology, and natural history, their global abundance and distribution, and their wide-ranging effects on the myriad organisms that inhabit tropical and temperate forests.

A study of the flowering plant flora of West Africa south of the Sahara with the emphasis upon species of ecological or economic importance.

In Chhindwara district no work has been done specifically on traditional knowledge of climber plants. The present account deal with plants commonly met with in the forest inhabited by tribal, villagers, vaid in Chhindwara district, Madhya-Pradesh. Hence the book will help the common reader to identify such plants. A small beginning is made with few plants in this book. Detailed account of more plants will follow subsequently. The information furnished here are based on work carried during the ethno-botanical field exploration and the observation recorded here are original. Botanical correct name of plant species, local name of plant, taxonomic description, its family, flowering and fruiting session, distribution, Specimen examined number, and ethnobotanical uses are furnished for each plants.