V 



\ a trailing character. The reason is that the young plants are killed out by the 



TwK 

 * ' 



ivy on its way from the seed out of which the plant first emerges, to the crowning 

 ^ of tree or tower with its flowering and seed-producing branches, which having 

 no further need of holding-claws, cease to produce them. In woods where ivies 

 ^ abound myriads of little seedling plants may be discovered, just showing their 

 glossy leaves above the grass. These leaves are seldom divided, they are usually 

 ^ bluntly triangular without lobes, the more distinctive form of the ivy proper 

 ^* being first developed when the plant has made some progress and found for 

 itself a congenial object of attachment. As we survey the scene, and observe 

 that every tree has its stem wreathed with the ivy, and some trees are heavily 

 garlanded above with the branching growth that produces flowers and fruit, it 

 will be noted that, although little ivy plants stud the ground, they do not 

 anywhere form a carpet on the common surface, and indeed make no progress 

 at all until they can obtain a hold to rise above it. In the garden we see $ ? 

 the plant winding on the flat ground as a trailer ; in the woods it is quite an 

 exceptional occurrence, it may indeed be termed an accident for it to assume 



grassy herbage amidst which they begin life ; they are suffocated through in- 

 ability to rise above the common crowd in the midst of which they were born. 

 The seeds that fall at the foot of a tree, a stone, or a tower, have no better 

 conditions for germinating than those that fall amongst rough herbage, but the 

 plants that spring from them are enabled from the first to employ their means ^ 

 of attachment and begin that aspiring life which renders the ivy one of the ) 

 grandest adornments of the landscape in which it happens to constitute a \t) 

 distinguishing feature. "When we meet with sheets of ivy unattached to 

 trees or walls or other perpendicular surfaces, it will generally be found that 

 they are on sloping ground, and it is not at all uncommon to find raised banks 



on the outskirts of woods and in the vicinity of ruins as richly clothed with 

 the elegant evergreen tracery as the trees and walls on which the plant is 

 more advantageously displayed. The poet Keats was a keen observer of such 

 things, and in his matchless Endymion he gives our plant its proper place in 

 the " mighty forest" " upon the sides of Latmos." 



" Paths there were many, *{ 



Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny, ( 



And ivy banks." 1 



1 " Endymion," Book I. 



