Common Ivy

Common Ivy is a native evergreen woody climber provides vital nesting and foraging for small birds.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Hedera helix
Family: 
Ivies
Family Latin name: 
ARALIACEAE
Category: 
Flowering Plants

Species description

Species description

This native evergreen woody climber provides vital nesting and foraging for small birds, egg-laying sites for lepidopterans and food for their caterpillars, and an essential food source for insects in Autumn and Winter.  The umbels of flowers, green with yellow anthers, appear in September, followed by black berries.  It is not a parasitic plant, so does not normally damage the trees it climbs up.

Infusions are soporific and aid digestion and improve the appetite.  They also ease an inflamed bladder.  Boiled ivy leaves are a treatment for corns, and ivy ointment soothes burns.  If ivy leaves are chopped and steeped in water, and then filtered, the solution may be brushed on a suit to clean the cloth, especially the collar and cuffs.  Market stallholders selling suits used to smarten up their appearance by brushing them with this solution.  Boiled ivy berries are edible, and were eaten by starving Channel Islanders during the second World War.  In folklore, in contrast to the masculine symbolism of the holly, ivy has feminine symbolism, hence the twining of these two plants in wreaths, to symbolise harmony.  Ivy is also symbolic of fertility, and ivy garlands were given to newly married couples in the hope that a child would soon arrive as a consequence.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)
Common Ivy is a native evergreen woody climber provides vital nesting and foraging for small birds.
The umbels of flowers, green with yellow anthers, appear in September, followed by black berries.
Common Ivy produces a mass of flowers in early autumn.
The provision of nectar and pollen late in the year provides a rich food source for a variety of pollinating insects.
In this photograph, from late September, an Ivy Bee is taking advantage of this late season provision of food resources.

Details

Species family information

The one member of this family native to the UK is the familiar common ivy, but it has many members in southeast Asia, where it is known as the ginseng family.

Category information

Nucleic multicellular photosynthetic organisms lived in freshwater communities on land as long ago as a thousand million years, and their terrestrial descendants are known from the late Pre-Cambrian 850 million years ago. Embryophyte land plants are known from the mid Ordovician, and land plant structures such as roots and leaves are recognisable in mid Devonian fossils. Seeds seem to have evolved by the late Devonian. The Embryophytes are green land plants that form the bulk of the Earth’s vegetation. They have specialised reproductive organs and nurture the young embryo sporophyte. Most obtain their energy by photosynthesis, using sunlight to synthesise food from Carbon Dioxide and Water.

The earliest known plant group is the Archaeplastida, which were autotrophic. Listing just the surviving descendants, which evolved in turn, we have the Red Algae, the Chlorophyte Green Algae, the Charophyte Green Algae, and then the Embryophyta or land plants. The earliest embryophytes were the Liverworts, followed by the Hornworts, and the Mosses. Then we have the Vascular Plants, the Lycophytes and Ferns, followed by the Spermatophytes or seed plants, the Gnetophytes, Conifers, Ginkgos, and Cycads, and finally the Magnoliophyta (Angiosperms) or flowering plants.