54 The Landscape Gardening Book 



Some twine bodily around their support, some catch it with 

 tendrils or twining leaf stalks, and some cling to it with aerial 

 rootlets, or with numerous tiny sucker-like disks provided for 

 the purpose. 



The latter of course are the vines which furnish the dense, 

 compact and beautiful wall coverings — the most formal growth 

 that there is. The ivies ascend in this way, also the " clarion- 

 flowered" trumpet creeper. Morning-glories and Wistaria are 

 twiners — note that they are more airy and careless in their 

 growth — while the grape, in both its ornamental and its purely 

 utilitarian forms, is an example of those still more careless 

 growers which draw themselves to their support with coiling 



tendrils. 



The so-called climbing roses do not climb at all, but must be 

 helped up and tied to their support; the matrimony vine, so 

 often found in old gardens, is at a similar disadvantage, but this 

 is usually planted where it may fall over a wall and in such a 

 position needs only to be let alone. A variety of the famihar 

 Forsythia, which has slender, pendulous branches, is practically 

 as much of a climber as either of these, though it is all too sel- 

 dom used as such. This is suited to a similar location against or 

 above a wall. And there are numerous hardy plants Usted as 

 prostrate shrubs which send out long runners quite the equal 

 of many reputed climbers. 



Of course only the climbers that belong to that class which 

 actually holds fast to a surface by disks or rootlets, are entirely 

 independent of a trelhs or support of some sort; but this very 

 quality of close surface clinging, on the other hand, makes its 

 possessors unsuitable for use in many places. The grip of the 

 tiny disks or rootlets carries the plant over and around an object 

 until it is practically lost to view— and that is going a little too 



