The longest plant on land - rattan

What does white rattan look like?

White rattan is also called provincial rattan and is also produced in Yunnan, my country. Rattan chairs, rattan beds, rattan baskets, rattan bookshelves, etc. are all made of white rattan. White rattan is a member of the palm family that is often grown in gardens. It mainly grows in tropical rainforests and can be found on China's Hainan Island. The white rattan has countless branches and long stems that hang down, forming many strange circles, so people nicknamed it "ghost rope".

The stems of white rattan are generally very thin, as thick as the mouth of a small wine glass, and some are even thinner. It has a bunch of feathery leaves on the top with sharp thorns on the leaves. The upper part of the stem to the tip is long and strong, and is covered with large, sharp, downward-curving thorns.

It is like a long whip with thorns, swaying in the wind. Once it touches a big tree, it will cling tightly to the trunk and quickly grow bunches of new leaves. Then it continues to climb up the trunk, while the leaves at the bottom gradually fall off. After the white vine climbed to the top of the tree, it continued to grow, but there was nothing left for it to climb on, so its increasingly long stems fell down, using the tree as a support, and entwined around it to form countless strange circles.

How long is white rattan?

The white rattan is 300 meters from the root to the top, twice as long as the tallest eucalyptus tree in the world. According to historical records, the longest record of white rattan is 400 meters. Is there any plant on land that is longer than this?

However, such long white vines may only exist in tropical rainforests and cannot be seen in China. As for the growth rate of white rattan, the picture below shows a 300-year-old white rattan in bloom. The branches are only 1 to 2 meters long, and it takes thousands of years to reach hundreds of meters.