Crap. V, HOOK-CLIMBERS, 183 
CHAPTER V. 
Hook anp Root-Ciimpers.—Conciupinc Remarks. 
Plants climbing by the aid of hooks, or merely scrambling over other 
plants—Root-climbers, adhesive matter secreted by the rootlets— 
General conclusions with respect to climbing plants, and the stages 
of their development. 
Hook-Climbers——In my introductory remarks, I stated 
that, besides the two first great classes of climbing 
plants, namely, those which twine round a support, 
and those endowed with irritability enabling them to 
seize hold of objects by means of their petioles or 
tendrils, there are two other classes, hook-climbers and 
root-climbers. Many plants, moreover, as Fritz Miller 
has remarked,* climb or scramble up thickets in a still 
more simple fashion, without any special aid, excepting 
that their leading shoots are generally long and flexible. 
It may, however, be suspected from what follows, that 
these shoots in some cases tend to avoid the light. 
The few hook-climbers which I have observed, namely, 
Galium aparine, Rubus australis, and some climbing 
* Journal of Linn. Soe. vol. ix. 
p. 348, Professor G. Jaeger has well 
remarked (‘In Sachen Darwin’s, 
insbesondere contra Wigand,’ 
1874, p. 106) that it is highly 
plants growing beneath other and 
taller species or trees, are naturally 
those which would be developed 
into climbers; and such plants, 
from stretching towards the light, 
characteristic of climbing plants to 
produce thin, elongated, and flexi- 
ble stems. He further remarks that 
and from not being much agitated 
by the wind, tend to produce long, 
thin and flexible shoots. 
