I then placed a post with extremely rugged
bark close to a pair of tendrils; twice they touched it for an hour
or two, and twice they withdrew; at last one of the hooked
extremities curled round and firmly seized an excessively minute
projecting point of bark, and then the other branches spread
themselves out, following with accuracy every inequality of the
surface. I afterwards placed near the plant a post without bark but
much fissured, and the points of the tendrils crawled into all the
crevices in a beautiful manner. To my surprise, I observed that the
tips of the immature tendrils, with the branches not yet fully
separated, likewise crawled just like roots into the minutest
crevices. In two or three days after the tips had thus crawled into
the crevices, or after their hooked ends had seized minute points,
the final process, now to be described, commenced.
This process I discovered by having accidentally left a piece of wool
near a tendril; and this led me to bind a quantity of flax, moss, and
wool loosely round sticks, and to place them near tendrils. The wool
must not be dyed, for these tendrils are excessively sensitive to
some poisons. The hooked points soon caught hold of the fibres, even
loosely floating fibres, and now there was no recoiling; on the
contrary, the excitement caused the hooks to penetrate the fibrous
mass and to curl inwards, so that each hook caught firmly one or two
fibres, or a small bundle of them.
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