Plant tendrils and bioinspired desings

Strong woody tendrils of grapes

Coiled tendril of grape around supporting material

Climbing plants deploy outstanding grasping strategies to climb using extremely flexible, sensitive, and filiform robotic organs known as 'tendrils'. It has been perceived that tendrils have 360° in-built sensors to locate supports around them for the plant to climb. Some plant tendrils (e.g. grapes) have very strong natural designs and materials that result in a strong death-grip like 'Geckos' lizards. It has been physically observed that grape tendrils'  are so strong and woody in nature that after drying, they remain attach to props.

Different plants use varied twisting and untwisting maneuvers to climb and cling around existing supporting material. If there are props at a distance, tendrils grow spirally and further projectile (jump in particular direction and angle with particular speed) using plant water & sap to control maneuvers and grasp.

It has also been observed plants determine and modify shapes, sizes, thickness, length of tendrils after recognizing existing supporting material around them. Generally, apical new tendrils of cucurbits grow straight and without twisted coils, and auxiliary tendrils are of various sizes and shapes with coils to climb around.

Apical straight tendrils in sponge gourd 

Twisted and coiled auxiliary tendrils in sponge gourd

Bitter gourd tendril trailing around climbing and untwisted coils

Apical tendrils in summer squash

Different plants have been evolved using all these innovations and technique. Traditional growers have observed and applied all these inspiring designs and innovations from agriculture to architecture. These bioinspired designs are further being studied and deployed under mainstream of biomimicry to design numerous industrial materials to intelligent robotic applications.

The bio-mimetic movements and coiled structures of plant tendrils have been studied and deployed to design fabricating strategy for crude oil cleanup to new concepts of robot grasping. it is also expected that the unique structures, shapes, movements can help to design numerous applications in energy conservation, tissue engineering, intelligent devices and smart textile & sports materials in the near future.

This article is result of  personal observations and imagination of Vipesh Garg, and proof read by Premila Parera from Urban Leaves, India.