Unwinding the Cucumber Tendril Mystery

Watching a cucumber plant grow is way more interesting than you’d think. in this video, we get a close look at the physics of the tendrils that cucumbers use to grab onto supports. I spend some of my gardening time trying to “help” a tendril catch the support I build for it, with mixed results. They seem to have it pretty well figured out on their own. Biologist Roger Hangarter has a website called Plants-In-Motion, where you can see many different time-lapse movies of plants. (via Laughing Squid)