"Neil Trotter" wrote
Also I ask the question here fully confident that, even if no-one is
able to answer it, at least I will have succeeded in causing a whole
new
bunch of people to scratch their heads and lie awake at nights just
wondering ...

Yep :~))


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I'm a gardening newby here in the Land of Pom, and have just made a
discovery whilst checking out the veges on early morning patrol,
namely
that my runner beans are climbing up the poles anti-clockwise (as
viewed
from above), or to put it another way, anti-sunwise.

What I would have expected to see is that they would wind themselves
clockwise, following the sun on its daily journey around the sky,
which
here (as in the southern hemisphere) rises in the East and sets in
the
West. The difference is that instead of moving West via North
(which it
does in the SH), here it is in the South at midday. Make sense?

As for runner beans -- I'm not sure they'll be in season just now,
even
in Northland, but maybe someone who knows about such things can tell
me
if they wind around poles the *other* way (i.e. clockwise as viewed
from
above) in NZ?

I'm guessing that if they do, it's somehow related to the movement
of
the sun, and not much at all to do with the coriolis effect :-)

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Interesting subject...............

http://www.smgrowers.com/info/vine.asp has :
The Twiners
This group of graspers has tips on the new growth that twist around
objects. These twiners often grow out in circular manner
(circunutation) but contrary to popular belief, there is no
relationship between right vs. left directional twisting as a function
of being in the northern or southern hemisphere. It has been found
that 95% of direction of growth is constant to species and the others
move in the direction that opportunity offers. Pole beans, Ipomoea,
Wisteria, Mandevilla, Stephanotis, Lonicera, Jasminum, Solanum and
Aristolochia are all examples of these simple twiners. Some in this
category have touch sensitive tissues such as those of Clematis whose
leaf tissue reacts to friction, causing petioles to curl around the
cause of the friction. Maurandia and Rhodochiton react in similar
manner


More theory:
http://www.ots.duke.edu/tropibiojnl/...ICA/TWINER.HTM

HTH Jenny