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Tendrils can be part of several families.
Relatively few plant families have evolved tendrils, in contrast to the many families of climbers with twining but leafy stems and petioles. The following is a list of the families or isolated genera where you are most likely to see tendrils.
- Antirrhinum, most notably certain California species of this genus of snapdragons (Family Scrophulariaceae), have tendrilar structures.
- Bignoniaceae is a family that includes many species of tropical lianas with leaflet tendrils. Many of the leaflet tendrils in this family are branched near the tip (e.g., trifid), and a few are very highly branched, as in - Pithecoctenium. A leaf of a lianaceous species may not form a leaflet tendril, but in other cases the leaflet tendril forms and may be exceedingly long.
- Clematis are temperate climbers (Family Ranunculaceae) with leaflet tendrils, such as virgin's bower, C. lasiantha in Southern California.
- Cobaea is a vine of the phlox family (Family Polemoniaceae) having the upper portion of a pinnately compound leaf forming as a leaf tendril.
- Cucurbitaceae, the gourd family, has many vines with tendrils, including the very common manroot of the - Los Angeles hillsides, Marah macrocarpus, and a foul-smelling gourd called calabazilla, Cucurbita foetidissima, which often can be found around dry gravel pits of Los Angeles County . In eastern North America, a fairly common cucurbit is the gourd Echinocystis lobata.
- Dioscorea, yams (Family Dioscoreaceae) may form tendrils. This is Dioscorea bulbifera.
- In Fabaceae, there are certain lineages of legumes, e.g., peas (Pisum), sweetpea (Lathyrus), and vetch (Vicia), with leaflet tendrils, and Bauhinia has tendrilar hooks (Examples: young tendrils, fully grown tendrils, and old, wooden hooks).
- Glory lily, Gloriosa, a type of lily (Family Colchicaceae) has leaf tip tendrils, as do other climbers of that family, such as Littonia modesta.
- Gouania lupuloides is a scrambling neotropical plant (Family Rhamnaceae) with hooked peduncle tendrils.
- Mutisia spp. can have leaf tip tendrils.
- Nepenthes are Asian pitcher plants (Family Nepenthaceae) on which a tendril forms from the leaf tip and then the tip of the tendril develops as the water-holding pitcher.
- Passifloraceae, the passionflowers, have shoot tendrils (Examples: a aff. P. auriculata and aff. P. vitifolia. These arise from a structure that forms both the tendril and one or two floral meristems from an initial axillary bud. Its exact nature is still not entirely understood.
- Sapindaceae, such as Serjania mexicana, climb by means of tendrils and prickles along the shoot.
- Smilax (Family Smilacaceae) has stipular tendrils (another species).
- Vitaceae, the grape family, which have "stem" tendrils, although some authors consider these to be prophyll tendrils. In this family, interpreting the tendril is very difficult, because a tendril is present opposite the leaf, unlike a true axillary bud, and only forms at particular nodes and not others. The same primordium that forms the tendril will on an older plant become an inflorescence, because either forms from an uncommitted structure. The vitaceous tendril may produce a bract and branch. Some of the species form a water-releasing hydathode at each tendrilar tip.
Within the family Vitaceae, many of the cultivated species have beautiful examples of tendrils (Examples: Tetrastigma and grape ivy, i.e., Cissus rhombifolia), but the most bizarre by far are the ones of Parthenocissus, including Boston ivy (P. tricuspidata) and Virginia creeper (P. quinquefolia), which have intricately branched tendrils possessing adhesive suckers (glandular disks), enabling this vine to climb masonry.
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