Eight things climbing plants do to reach the light · Deep Cuts

DC·224 Deep Cuts

A pea tendril coils into a spring that reverses halfway

Once a climbing tendril has gripped a support at both ends, it cannot simply coil up — twisting the whole length would tear it apart. Instead it forms two opposite-handed helices that meet at a reversal point, called a perversion, leaving the net twist at zero. The result is a tiny double-handed spring that lets the plant ride out wind and tugging without snapping or unhooking. Darwin described it in 1865; physicists later showed it is simply the lowest-energy shape.

Bindweed always spirals one way, honeysuckle the other

A twining stem doesn't choose its direction — its species does. Bindweed always winds up a support one way; honeysuckle always winds the opposite way, and no amount of coaxing will flip either. The handedness is set by the plant's own growth, not by the sun or which hemisphere it grows in — wind a stem backwards by hand and it will unwind and re-twine its own way. The two stubborn opposite climbers even inspired a comic song about a doomed romance.

A strangler fig leaves a hollow tower where its tree stood

A strangler fig begins life as a seed dropped by a bird high in another tree's crown. It sends roots creeping down the trunk to the soil, then thickens them into a woven lattice that wraps the host tight and outcompetes it for light and water. The host eventually dies and rots away — leaving the fig standing as a hollow cylinder of fused roots, a tree-shaped cage built around the ghost of the tree that raised it.

A tendril feels a twig and grabs it within minutes

Climbing plants can feel. A free tendril sweeps slow circles through the air until it brushes something solid; the touched side then grows more slowly while the far side grows faster, curling the tendril around the support — sometimes a complete loop in five to ten minutes. The contact triggers a rush of calcium and a shift of the growth hormone auxin to the outer side. A few seconds of stroking can lock in a curl that lasts for days.

Boston ivy glues itself to glass with tiny foot-pads

Some climbers don't need cracks to cling to — they bring their own glue. Boston ivy and Virginia creeper grow short branched tendrils that end in little flattened pads; on contact, each pad swells, secretes an adhesive and cements itself to brick, stone or even smooth glass. Because the pads grip without burrowing in, the plant can sheath a wall without prying it apart, and the bond can hold many times the tendril's own weight.

Rattan climbs on hooks and grows the world's longest stems

Rattan is a climbing palm that hauls itself through the rainforest on grappling hooks — whip-like extensions and leaf sheaths armed with whorls of backward-curving spines that snag neighbouring plants. Freed from having to build a thick self-supporting trunk, its slender stem can run on and on: some species exceed 100 metres, among the longest stems of any plant on Earth. Stripped of its spines, that same stem becomes the cane of wicker furniture.

A bramble cane arches over and roots itself a new plant

A blackberry doesn't just spread by seed — it walks. As a long cane arches over under its own weight and its tip touches soil, that tip sprouts roots and becomes a whole new plant a stride away from the parent. Repeat the move and a single bramble marches outward into a dense, self-cloning thicket. A first-year cane can reach 3 to 9 metres, and gardeners borrow the trick — pin a tip to the ground and it roots in a few weeks.

Aging wisteria thickens into trunks that crush their frame

Wisteria climbs by twining, but give it decades and those soft stems harden into wrist- and leg-thick woody trunks strong enough to buckle a trellis, snap wooden posts and strangle a host tree. The vines are remarkably long-lived — specimens of a century or two are common, and one in Japan is said to be over a thousand years old. Left unchecked, a single plant's slow, relentless squeeze can tear apart the very structure built to hold it up.

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