On Sun, 3 Nov 2013 Farm1 wrote:
"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
news
The direction that climbers twine is controlled by their genetics.
Some, e.g. hops, climb from right to left, but the majority, e.g.
beans and bindweed, climb from left to right*. Nothing to do with
which hemisphere they grow in, or the direction of the sun's travel
across the sky, as many seem to think.
* http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictiona...Twining+Plants
Thank you. Working off your cite as a base, I've since found out that this
way of twining is called dextrorse and twining in the other direction is
called sinistrorse.
Well, not quite! Dextrose is a sugar. But the Latin roots of the words
are correct. Dexter means right-handed and sinister means left-handed.
I'm not sure what adjectives can be derived from those nouns in the
context of twining plants; probably something like "dextral" and
"sinistral".
David
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David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK