304 REVISION OF THE NATURAL ORDER HEDERACES. 
The European Ivy is Hedera Heliz, Linn. It is not found out of 
Europe, and may at once be known by its uppermost leaves being 
ovate or elliptical, its umbels arranged in simple racemes, and its 
pedicels and calyx being covered with white stellate hair, the hair 
having from 6-8, but never more, rays. From 
time immemorial a variety with white and yellow 
variegated leaves has been cultivated in gardens; 
even Pliny mentions it; indeed it is one of the 
oldest, if not the oldest, variegated garden plant of 
which we have any record. The fruit of Hedera 
H. Helix. Helix in northern Europe is generally black ; in 
Germany it occurs occasionally with white; and in European Turkey, 
Greece, and Italy with yellow berries. The black-fruited kind has 
always been considered as the true H. Helix, and the white as a variety 
of it, which indeed it is; but the yellow has been made, I think, un- 
justly into a distinct species, and named H. poetarum by Bertoloni, 
and some time previously H. chrysocarpa by Walsh. It is the latter 
plant which played so important a part in ancient Greece and Rome, 
its leaves supplying the materials for the wreaths with which poets 
were crowned, and at the festivals in honour of Dionysos all casks, 
vessels, _ etc. were decorated; it was customary even to 
d sit upon ivy branches on those occasions.* Tt is believed tradi- 
tionally that the yellow-fruited Ivy came from India with the worship 
of Bacchus; and the fact that the Nepal Ivy described by Wallich has 
yellow fruit is regarded as a proof of the correctness of this tradition. 
But a close examination of the European yellow-fruited plant shows 
that it is specifically identical with ZZ. Helix, and specifically different 
from the Nepal and all other Asiatic specimens. If the worship of 
Dionysos gradually crept from India to Greece and Rome, anda yellow- 
fruited Ivy was deemed essential to its proper performance, there was no 
need of carrying the Asiatic plant into Europe, as an indigenous variety 
(chrysocarpa==poetarum) occurred at the very threshold; whilst the 
Asiatic Ivy, as we shall presently see, is spread from the central high- 
lands to the most western confines of Asia,—to ancient Colchis. 
The African Ivy is Hedera Canariensis, Willd. It is found in the 
Canary Islands, Madeira, and the north of Africa, and may at once 
* For further particulars, see C. Bóttieher, * Baumkultus der Hellenen ’ (Tree- 
worship of the Hellenes), Berlin, 1856, 8vo, p. 333. 
