Tendrils Enable Upward Climb

many green trees and plants during the day

Biological Strategy

Flagroot

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Move in/on Solids

To obtain needed resources or escape predators, some living systems must move on solid substances, some must move within them, and others must do both. Solids vary in their form; they can be soft or porous like leaves, sand, skin, and snow, or hard like rock, ice, or tree bark. Movement can involve a whole living system, such as an ostrich running across the ground or an earthworm burrowing through the soil. It can also involve just part of a living system, such as a mosquito poking its mouthparts into skin. Solids vary in smoothness, stickiness, moisture content, density, etc, each of which presents different challenges. As a result, living systems have adaptations to meet one, and sometimes multiple, challenges. For example, some insects must be able to hold onto both rough and slippery leaf surfaces due to the diversity in their environment.

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Attach Permanently

A living system can conserve energy by attaching permanently to a particular site because it can take advantage of resources that come its way, rather than expending energy to move to resources. A permanent attachment, intended to last the lifetime of the living system, creates special challenges. For example, physical mechanisms, such as the anchor that holds a marine algae to the ocean’s bottom, must be able to withstand forces that can pull it off its substrate. Chemical mechanisms, such as a barnacle’s glue, must avoid both physical and chemical breakdown, such as being dissolved by water.

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Flowering Plants

Clade Angiosperms (“receptacle seed”): Dandelions, oaks, grasses, cacti, apples

With 416 families containing some 300,000 known species, angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants, and they can be found around the globe in a wide variety of habitats. They are characterized by seeds that grow enclosed in ovaries, which are enclosed in flowers. The floral organs then develop into fruits of myriad kinds and dimensions, from simple seed casings on maples to elaborate fleshy growths like papayas. The oldest flower known from fossils, Montsechia vidalii, appeared during the Jurassic Period 130 million years ago. They are the primary food source for herbivorous animals, which in turn makes them the indirect food source for carnivores as well.

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Rattan palms attach to established trees and climb vigorously upwards thanks to long, thin tendrils with extremely sharp, curved hooks.

Attachment organs vary between species

Hook type differs between species

“Rattans, the highly specialised climbing palms of south-east Asia, have stems that are barely thicker than a man’s finger. The front tip, from which all growth comes, explores with extremely long, thin tendrils equipped along their length with needle-sharp curved hooks. If these snag your arm – and the tendrils are so thin that they can easily be overlooked – they can rip both your shirt and your flesh. With these, it hitches itself on to an established tree and actively grows upwards. Sometimes the support is not strong enough to bear the extra load and it collapses, but the rattan is not deterred. It continues to grow as it sprawls across the forest floor and does so with such vigour that some species develop longer stems than any other plant and may reach a length of over five hundred feet.” (Attenborough 1995:162-163)

Last Updated May 9, 2018

References

Book

The Private Life of Plants

BBC Books | 21/08/1995 | David Attenborough

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Reference

“Climbing rattans (Calamoideae) of Southeast Asia and Africa and the distantly related but morphologically similar genus Desmoncus (Arecoideae) of the neotropics, have a highly characteristic mode of climbing.Both groups are renowned in the tropics for their catchiness and efficacy in attaching to supports and anything else that tries to pass them by. Attachment is secured either by modified leaf apices known as cirri or modified inflorescences known as flagella. These attachment structures bear a variety of reflexed spines or hooks along their length… A series of increasingly strong hooks, aligned in the same direction along a rachis or axis will effectively ensure that movement of the host plant and engaging-disengaging of the structure will eventually hold the plant tauter against the surrounding branches under stronger loads, on stronger hooks and thus provide greater stability against further disengaging and risk of falling.” (Rowe et al. 2009:876-877)

Journal article

Biomechanics of climbing palms and how they climb

Plant Signaling & Behavior Volume 4, 2009 - Issue 9 | Nick Rowe, Sandrine Isnard

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