Tendrils and Bines
June 13, 2021
This morning I walk slowly along the Creek, mostly sweating, but also completely taken by all the explosion of leaf and vine, steaming green and bright. The past month brought more rains than I’ve ever seen this time of year, so the water’s high, cloudy, and noisy. Mud-covered grasses lie bent along the stream’s banks. The air remains thick, saturated with evaporation, young birdsong, damsel flies, gnats. And over stones, across fallen trees, draped over prickly pear cactus, wrapping yucca leaves, and climbing bushes, tendrils and bines curl, seek, launch, twine, and grab hold of almost anything but themselves, everywhere. Half the plants out here seem to be specializing in climbing in circles this morning.
Our ninth-grade biology teacher, Rose Woodward, had no less than two annoying habits. She could not lecture more than one paragraph without reminding us that we needed to remember everything for an upcoming exam. And never looking at us directly while she spoke. But I clearly recall her saying, in a monotone voice while gazing into the back wall of the classroom, “The major difference between vegetative life and animal life is that plants do not move around like animals do. Plants do not have to move for their food like animals have to. Now you might find this on a test.” We did. But not in real life.
Years later, I read Charles Darwin say, “It has often been vaguely asserted that plants are distinguished from animals by not having the power of movement. It should rather be said that plants acquire and display this power only when it is of some advantage to them; this being of comparatively rare occurrence, as they are affixed to the ground, and food is brought to them by the air and rain.” In 1864, Charles Darwin's "The Movement and Habits of Climbing Plants" was published by the Linnean Society.
I returned to the house and quickly found my free copy of Darwin’s book from my beloved Gutenberg press.. It’s a long and detailed work, but here are some of the things we find out about tendrils this warm Sunday afternoon:
“All tendrils are sensitive, but in various degrees, to contact with an object, and curve towards the touched side. With several plants a single touch, so slight as only just to move the highly flexible tendril, is enough to induce curvature. Passiflora gracilis possesses the most sensitive tendrils which I have observed: a bit of platina wire 0.02 of a grain (1.23 mg.) in weight, gently placed on the concave point, caused a tendril to become hooked, as did a loop of soft, thin cotton thread weighing one thirty-second of a grain (2.02 mg.) With the tendrils of several other plants, loops weighing one sixteenth of a grain (4.05 mg.) sufficed. The point of a tendril of Passiflora gracilis began to move distinctly in 25 seconds after a touch, and in many cases after 30 seconds. Asa Gray also saw movement in the tendrils of the Cucurbitaceous genus, Sicyos, in 30 seconds. The tendrils of some other plants, when lightly rubbed, moved in a few minutes; with Dicentra in half-an-hour; with Smilax in an hour and a quarter or half; and with Ampelopsis still more slowly. The curling movement consequent on a single touch continues to “to increase for a considerable time, then ceases; after a few hours the tendril uncurls itself, and is again ready to act. When the tendrils of several kinds of plants were caused to bend by extremely light weights suspended on them, they seemed to grow accustomed to so slight a stimulus, and straightened themselves, as if the loops had been removed. It makes no difference what sort of object a tendril touches, with the remarkable exception of other tendrils and drops of water”
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| A fine tendril this morning |
Thigmotropism is our inelegant-sounding term for the highly sensitive behavior of these plants with tendrils. When the ever-moving tendril at the end of the stem or leaf comes in contact with something other than itself (most tendrils will not attach to themselves, lucky for them), a bunch of hormones get activated, and they work to increase the plant’s skin cell-size opposite the stick, or branch, or whatever was just touched. This unequal cell growth causes the tendril to grow in an unstraight (my word) sort of way, thus coiling.
As suggested, the tendrils won’t coil around other parts of their plant nor even around parts of another nearby plant of the same species. Thanks to a clever reward from evolution for all their struggling, they are able to chemically detect their own identity and thus avoid climbing all over themselves or their neighboring relatives, none of which would prove advantageous if they were hoping to find a place in the sun.
And then the bines. Plants that don’t depend on tendrils to wrap around things on their way to heaven but instead just go ahead and spin their whole stem around the nearby stick, pergola, tree, swing-set, or femur bone are referred to as bines. As in woodbine. Our favorite flavored bine would be the hop vine.
In the thick woods alongside the Pond, across the Stonefield, down the fencerow, and in the garden, woodbine, morning-glory, honeysuckle, grapevine, watermelon, cucumbers, and beans are all unstraightening themselves to find a handhold and a bit more sweltering sunshine.
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| Morning glory climbing yucca in the Stonefield |
He’s most famous for his carpe diem poems, as in
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
But here’s one for today:
The Vine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which crawling one and every way
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced.
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
(All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke;
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
And the bonus track from next to the Creek this morning....
