Borrowed Ascent

"The growth of climbers, even more than all other plants, is upward towards the light. In the shade of the forest they rarely or never flower, and seldom even produce foliage; but when they have reached the summit of the tree that supports them, they expand under the genial influence of light and air, and often cover their foster-parent with blossoms not its own.

Here, as a rule, the climber’s growth would cease; but the time comes when the supporting tree rots and falls, and the creeper comes with it in torn and tangled masses to the ground. But though its foster-parent is dead it has itself received no permanent injury, but shoots out again till it finds a fresh support, mounts another tree, and again puts forth its leaves and flowers.
...
Mr. Darwin has now shown us the marvelous interdependence of every part of nature. Not only is each organism necessarily related to and affected by all things, living and dead, that surround it ... [The the natural world is a system of] complex relations and mutual interdependence, which link together every animal and vegetable form … into one grand organic whole."

- Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913)