I’m fascinated by wild vines. We often see vines growing neatly in rows in vineyards, making it easy to forget that these are wild plants, typically growing as lianas. This term describes plants like the grape vine, which are structural parasites, using other plants for support.
Plants compete for resources such as nutrients, water, and light. Trees, for example, grow tall to intercept light that other plants can’t reach, requiring a strong structure and slow growth. They play the long game.
Vines, on the other hand, take advantage of trees’ investments. They belong to a group of plants that rely on others’ hard work. Instead of strong woody trunks, vines have spindly, thin trunks and specialized structures called tendrils to attach firmly to their supporting plants.
Vines also possess adaptations suitable for this lifestyle. First, their root systems can penetrate soil already populated by other plants’ roots to compete for nutrients. Second, they are relatively drought-resistant, contending for water supplies already used by other plants.
The goal of the vine is to reach the canopy of the trees they are growing up, and there get their photosynthetic fix. And where they manage to reach sunlight, this is a good place to produce flower clusters and then bunches of grapes, which are designed to attract birds who eat these grapes – when they are ripe – and then disperse the seeds.
In Eurasia, the home of Vitis vinifera, there aren’t so many wild vines left, partly because of phylloxera, but also because of loss of habitat. But in North America, native vines are still easy to spot. I recently saw some in Niagara, Canada, and also in Sonoma, California.
Here are some annotated pictures of these vines.
Finally, there are some ancient vine trellising techniques that mimic the way vines would have been grown in the wild. This involves growing vines up trees, and you can still find this occasionally. These two pictures of vigna maritata were taken in Chianti Classico, in an old plot.