Sign and Vine

A few years ago when Reagan High School was overcrowded, students parked on all neighborhood streets, including ours. Traffic could hardly get down the street nor turn around at the cul-de-sacs.  We petitioned the city to restrict parking, which they did with signs limiting parking during certain hours on school days.  The overcrowding was solved, but the signs remain, totally ignored by everyone.  Here is the one in our yard.

My next door neighbor has one in his yard as well.  He has his front yard covered with Asian Jasmine ground cover, a very prolific vine plant.  This plant is growing around the base of the sign post as shown below.

Note that the sign post is square-section steel about 1.5 inches on a side with holes about 3/8" diameter on all four sides about an inch apart vertically.  Now here comes the interesting part.  The vine entered one of those holes and started growing.  I don't know whether it entered by pure chance or had some affinity for the dark hole, but in any case it entered.  Now it had many chances to come back out again, but stayed inside.  Vines like Morning Glory or Kudzu tend to spiral wrap around any vertical object and climb toward the top.  This plant does not do that.  Many plants grow toward light sources.  This one had probably 300 - 400 chances to exit the pole through one of the holes, but did not do that.  It grew upward, inside the pole, until it reached the top and then out the top. Here  is the pole near the sign and the vine exiting the pole.

So it appears the vine was directed only by gravity, preferring the dark inside of the pole to many opportunities to exit to the light. I find this fascinating, though probably not of interest to anyone else.  My neighbor was weeding her yard and saw me taking the photos.  I explained my interest in the vine, and she was underwhelmed. 

All photos made with Lumix Gh2 camera with Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens.