120 THE STORY OF PLANT Live 
it lives as a parasite, as it were, though not in the 
ordinary sense, the climbing form is most usually 
found in woods and plantations, on the sides of cliffs, 
where it clings to bushes or to projecting rock-surfaces, 
in gardens, hedgerows in fields and meadows, and 
by the roadside. 
Probably its original habitat was a woodland. But 
it seems equally at home on rock surfaces, where it 
climbs vertically. There is a trailing form, however, 
which does not develop a thick main stem and 
branches, growing in hedge bottoms and amongst 
undergrowth, and this apparently does not flower. 
But this last will, when the opportunity occurs, merge 
into the climbing, more vigorous plant. 
The habit of Ivy is thus climbing or trailing. In 
the former the stem may be thick with an ashy bark, 
covered with root-like suckers which enable it to 
cling like a leech to its support. The bark when 
old is cracked and rimose. The younger branches 
are green or purple in colour. The stem is often 
thickened at the base, branching above with equal 
forks, twining around the trunk or clinging to a wall, 
continually ramifying as it grows taller and taller. 
The leaves are trilobed or five-lobed, oval, cordate, 
entire, and thick in the upper flowering branches, 
with white or reddish veins. 
The flowers are yellow, on peduncles in umbels, 
and rather crowded, erect and downy. ) 
The black berries are globose, purple within, with 
four to five cavities. The style is persistent. 7 
