The **hop (Humulus lupulus)** is a vigorous native climbing perennial — a natural choice for sending up the trunks of a forest garden's canopy trees to make use of the vertical space. **Notes:** - A hop is a *bine*, not a vine: it has no tendrils or suckers and instead climbs by twining its entire bristly stem, always clockwise. - It is herbaceous — every autumn the whole plant collapses to the ground, then races back up from the rootstock the following spring, gaining several metres in a few months. - Hops are dioecious: only female plants produce the papery cones, whose golden lupulin glands give beer its bitterness and aroma. - The foliage is a foodplant for the caterpillars of the comma butterfly, and the tangle of bines offers excellent nesting cover.