Said of a plant, trailing means it does not stand up. Its stems grow out flat along the ground, or spill down over the side of a pot, a wall, or a basket, instead of climbing upward. Gardeners and plant shops use this word constantly — trailing ivy, a trailing rosemary, trailing plants for hanging baskets — because it tells a buyer exactly what shape the plant will take in the room. It is worth setting beside its neighbour, climbing. A climbing plant also has long soft stems, but it grabs hold and goes up; a trailing plant has no way of holding on, so gravity decides for it. Many plants can do both: give ivy a wall and it climbs, give it a shelf and it trails. Notice too that trailing is almost always used before the noun (a trailing plant, trailing stems) rather than after it — you would say "it trails" rather than "it is trailing" when the plant is just doing what it always does. And it is a calm, pleasant word here; it carries none of the tiredness or failure that trailing has when it describes a person walking behind or a team losing a match.