‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe’

These are the opening lines to The Jabberwocky, a poem about a mythical dreadful beast that appears in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 book Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice found there’. The poem contains many bizarre words invented by the author and what each of them means depends upon the reader’s own imagination. Most people probably think of the ‘slithy toves’ as giant worms or snakes, but I prefer to think of them as vines, especially those of the native American grape (Vitus sp), which forms twisted slippery ropes in the dark and dank undergrowth (see the gallery of slithy toves below).