IVY. 112 



Ivy (Hedera helix]. 



How common is Ivy, whether wild or cultivated ! Yet how 

 few are acquainted with its flowers ! 



There is no occasion to say that the Ivy is an evergreen 

 perennial climbing shrub, nor to describe the form of the 

 beautiful leathery leaf. If there is one leaf that may be said to 

 be thoroughly well known to every British man, woman, and 

 child, it must be the Ivy, for it thrives in dark corners of towns 

 as well as on the hedge-banks of the country, and its foliage 

 has been so well used in all classes of ornamental work. And 

 yet there are few leaves that are subject to such great variation 

 of form, though, with all its changes, one dominant character 

 runs through them all, except its upper leaves, which are totally 

 unlike. The Holly has prickly leaves for its lower branches, 

 but those that are above the heads of browsing cattle have 

 "entire" margins. So with the Ivy ; its five-lobed leaves are 

 for its trailing and climbing branches, but when it has reached 

 the top of the wall or the tree it puts on simple lance-shaped 

 leaves, and in September or October crowns these shoots with 

 its umbels of yellow-green flowers. 



The flower consists of a calyx with five triangular teeth, 

 petals and stamens five each, style one, with five obscure 

 stigmas. The flowers are succeeded by blackish berries, some 

 times yellow. There is a common woodland variety, with 

 smaller, narrower leaves, that never flowers ; neither do those 

 forms that persistently trail along the hedge bottom instead of 

 climbing. Ivy has been at various times condemned as causing 

 dampness in the walls it covers ; the exact converse is the 

 truth. It is the only British species ; the genus contains but 

 two for the whole world. 



