“Tendril” is what the twisty part of a vine is officially called. In most of the pumpkin fields I’ve seen, the tendrils have nothing to climb onto, so they simply wither up and turn brown, as this one did. I think its wispy brunette ringlets look striking against the orange skin of the pumpkin.
I got curious about the pumpkin vine, and did some research online…did you know that you can grow smaller pumpkins vertically on a trellis made of sturdy wire, stout sticks, etc? You could, I suppose, even grow an entire pumpkin arbor…how cool is that?
Speaking of cool, I was also checking out some time-lapse videos of tendrils attaching to objects. I couldn’t find any pumpkin vine videos, but there were plenty about cucumbers, morning glories, peas, etc.
Speeded up, the tendrils look like miniature snakes being coaxed by an off-screen snake charmer. They wave around until they find an object to grab onto, and then spiral around and around it until they have a good firm hold, like little green boa constrictors!
The way they do this (this is a grossly oversimplified version) is that once the tendril touches a solid object, one side of it grows faster than the other, which causes the spiraling and makes it look like the tendril is actually wrapping itself around an object instead of just growing around it. I think that’s pretty darn cool too!
The lowly pumpkin vine CAN be a high-climber!
rprtphoto 