On the movements and habits of climbing plants/Introduction

by Charles Darwin

I was led to this subject by an interesting, but too short, paper by Professor Asa Gray on the movements of the tendrils of some Cucurbitaceous plants^[1]. My observations were more than half completed before I became aware that the surprising phenomenon of the spontaneous revolutions of the steins and tendrils of climbing plants had been long ago observed by Palm and by Hugo von Mohl^[2], and had subsequently been the subject of two memoirs by Dutrochet^[3]. Nevertheless I believe that my observations, founded on the close examination of above a hundred widely distinct living plants, contain sufficient novelty to justify me in laying them before the Society.

Climbing plants may be conveniently divided into those which spirally twine round a support, those which ascend by the movement of the foot-stalks or tips of their leaves, and those which ascend by true tendrils,—these tendrils being either modified leaves or flower-peduncles, or perhaps branches. But these subdivisions, as we shall see, nearly all graduate into each other. There are two other distinct classes of climbing-plants, namely those furnished with hooks and those with rootlets; but, as such plants exhibit no special movements, we are but little concerned with them; and generally, when I speak of climbing plants, I refer exclusively to the first great class.

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1. Proc. Amer. Acad, of Arts and Sciences, vol. iv. Aug. 12, 1858, p. 98.
2. Ludwig H. Palm, Ueber das Winden der Pflanzen; Hugo von Mold, Ueber den Bau and das Winden der Ranken und Schlingpflanzen, 1827. Palm's Treatise was published only a few weeks before Mohl's. See also 'The Vegetable Cell' (translated by Henfrey), by H. von Mohl, p. 147 to end.
3. "Des Mouvements révolutifs spontanés," &c., 'Comptes Rendus,' tom. xvii. (1843) p. 989; "Recherches sur la Volubilité des Tiges," &c., tom. xix. (1844) p. 295.