This guide focuses on the identification of Surinamese trees, based on field, vegetative, floristic, and wood characteristics. It includes botanical descriptions, wood descriptions, illustrations and photos of one hundred Surinamese commercial timber tree species, potential timber tree species, and tree species protected by Surinamese forest law. It is the first book for Suriname with more than four hundred photos to illustrate the characteristics of each tree species for easy identification in the field. The guide is intended for anyone interested in learning and identifying Surinamese timber trees, particularly for the Surinamese forest organizations and different timber companies in Suriname. While this guide focuses on Suriname, many of these species can be found in the adjacent countries of Guyana and French Guiana as well, or have a neotropical distribution, allowing the book to be applicable across the entire region.

Lianas (woody vines) are iconic symbols of tropical forests around the world. These plants use the energetically expensive investment of trees in woody stems to gain relatively inexpensive access to the light-rich canopy. The evolution of a climbing habit has occurred in many unrelated plant groups using twining and clasping shoots or specialized structures such as tendrils, hooks, spines, adhesive roots, and internal stem anatomy. Lianas contribute significantly to tropical forest diversity (25-40% of species), carbon sequestration, biomass, plant-animal interactions and forest gap dynamics. Although they are often considered pests in commercial forestry, woody climbers are important to many traditional peoples as medicines, subsistence fibers and non-timber forest products. Largely due to their inaccessibility, lianas and other climbers remain among the most poorly documented lifeforms in the tropics. 0This book aims to facilitate learning and identification of woody climbers of the Guianas (Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname) for specialists and non-specialists by using an image-rich format, common and scientific names, simplified botanical terminology, and character icon guides, and by describing ecology and uses.