Old Newby Wants to Know: VINES, CLIMBERS, GROUND COVER?

I'm sure this issue has been hashed and rehashed. How can you tell a climber from a vine? How can you tell a vine from a linear ground cover. I bought a vine and it grew ok---into a clump of leaves all on same vine in a clump on the ground . So, I started running strings, and pulling it up and so on. Next I found this wonderful "vine" that had little feelers that would twine themselves to everything. That one took some string, too, but it did it's own climbing. Big and beautiful now. Than I came across a vine that was here before I bought house. It is on a rock wall. Too take it off, you need a pair of pliers. What is that one called. I want to plant more and more.
My house is a big, Tudor with great rocks on outside. It's just crying for a clinging vine that doesn't need strings or trellaces. I will just come up from the ground and attach itself to my outsode walls and grow up and up. As soon as I figure out how to upload a photo to Dave's Garden (anyone here know the trick) I will send photos of house and garden in San Antonio.

Climbers and vines are pretty much the same thing. Vines have different ways of attaching themselves to supports--some like ivy have little stickies to attach themselves to surfaces. Others put out spirally tendrils that wrap around things and they climb that way. Both of those types of vines can climb on their own as long as there's a surface (for the stickies) or a trellis type setup (for the tendrils) that they can climb. There are some plants that grow long viney branches but don't have tendrils or stickies, and they depend on you to help hold them onto their support (either tying them to it, weaving branches through it, etc), they don't have a good way to do it on their own. If you leave a vine (any of those types) without something to climb, then it can spread out on the ground and act as a groundcover. (but not all groundcovers are vines--there are plenty of other sorts of plants that are naturally low growing and spread but are not vines)

The vine that's on the rock wall that has to be removed with pliers is probably either an ivy or Virginia Creeper--they are common vines that can climb that way.