A twining vine's spin has nothing to do with the sun or the hemisphere
Some climbing plants always twist clockwise and others always anticlockwise, whichever hemisphere they grow in. Runner beans and bindweed turn one way, honeysuckle and black bryony the other, because the rotation of the growing tip is built into the plant rather than a response to the sun's path across the sky.
A vine is any plant whose stems trail or climb, and the word can also mean the stems themselves, as in wickerwork. In the British Isles it usually means a grapevine, with climber used for everything else. The strategy is thrifty: by leaning on rocks or other plants instead of building much supporting tissue, a vine reaches sunlight at minimal energy cost. Kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle have exploited it so well that both are invasive in parts of North America. Some tropical vines even grow away from light at first, a habit called skototropism, which steers them to a tree trunk they can then ascend.
Climbing has evolved independently in many plant families and is linked to the success and diversification of several groups. Darwin sorted climbers into five classes by method: hook climbers, root climbers, tendril bearers, leaf climbers and twiners. Ivy clings with roots sprouting along its stem, Clematis wraps its leaf stalks around supports, Parthenocissus tips its tendrils with sticky pads, and climbing roses hang on with thorns.
The oddities are memorable. Climbing ferns of the genus Lygodium ascend with their fronds rather than their stems, and those fronds in theory never stop unrolling. The climbing fetterbush slips its stem into a crack in the bark of trees such as bald cypress, flattens out and creeps upward beneath the outer bark before branching out near the top. Poison ivy and bittersweet stay as low shrubs until a support appears.
Twining vines, called bines, climb by spiralling shoots, often helped by rough stems or downward bristles; hops, grown to flavour beer, are the best-known commercial example. The opposite spins of bindweed and honeysuckle inspired the satirical song Misalliance by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, whose lyrics actually get the directions the wrong way round.
Source: Vine
