The revolving movement ceases after the early growth of each shoot.

As in many widely separated families of plants, single species and single genera possess the power of revolving, and have thus become twiners, they must have independently acquired it, and cannot have inherited it from a common progenitor.
Hence, I was led to predict that some slight tendency to a movement of this kind would be found to be far from uncommon with plants which did not climb; and that this had afforded the basis for natural selection to work on and improve.

When I made this prediction, I knew of only one imperfect case, namely, of the young flower-peduncles of a Maurandia which revolved slightly and irregularly, like the stems of twining plants, but without making any use of this habit.

Soon afterwards Fritz Muller discovered that the young stems of an Alisma and of a Linum--plants which do not climb and are widely separated in the natural system--revolved plainly, though irregularly, and he states that he has reason to suspect that this occurs with some other plants.

These slight movements appear to be of no service to the plants in question; anyhow, they are not of the least use in the way of climbing, which is the point that concerns us.