SPIRAL GROWTH

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6442, 24 January 1924, Page 5

SPIRAL GROWTH

One of the unsolved problems in spiral growth is presented by the hop and the climbing bean and the spiral growth of certain trees, writes Edward C. Barton in the London Observer. The hop, when transplanted to Tasmania, retains the habit of climbing in British corkscrew fashion, although the native plants grow lefthanded. The bean has been cultivated in Europe many years, and yet retains its left-handed habits, reminiscent of development south of the equator. On the Queensland coast the so called myrtle tree grows a fibrous stem, showing left-handed spirals, but the tap root fibres are right-handed, so that it appears as though its upper and lower ends had been held fast, while the central portion had been strongly twisted round. If the sun’s movements determine the direction of the various plant spiralities above ground, the myrtle’s growth bedow the ground still presents a puzzle unsolved.