An unusual but useful landmark

Grapes, botanically described as a berry, grow on the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus Vitis. Grapes are a delicious and nutritious fruit and the vines are hardy – you can plant one anywhere and it will grow well with little care, though you have to be careful of bugs that tend to attack it easily. It is a creeper so it will grow in all directions it has something to cling onto unless it is trimmed and kept short, like they keep them in vineyards.

In the picture you can see a flourishing grape vine, growing on of all places, electric wires emanating from a pole on a street in a residential area. It is not known whether the vine ever bears fruit as no one has been seen trying to reach a bunch of juicy grapes -- but it has been left to grow unhindered and is a familiar landmark when people are asked to describe a location in the colony!

Every now and again the electricity supply company sends teams to cut branches of trees that are growing near or between electric wires so that when the weather is stormy these wires are not broken or pulled from the poles. They have ignored this vine for years, probably because it does not pose a danger to the wires or is not strong enough to dislocate them no matter how strong the wind is.

While some of the vines long, creeping fronds are now hanging down the others are slowly working their way to the other side of the road. It will be interesting to see what turn it takes when it does. And by the way, this is not the first vine seen growing like this. A similar sight was seen in, of all places, Washington DC a couple of years ago and it is believed that it has flourished and grown quite big -- and has juicy grapes!