There won’t be many people who have Ivy in their top ten list of favourite wildflowers, but I might be one of them.
Ivy is an all-year-round super-supporter of nature, but it’s now in September that it really starts to pack a punch.
Just as most plant species are closing down for the winter, Ivy springs into life. It will flower from now until November, providing a vital late source of pollen and nectar for insects, especially bees and hoverflies.
Wait for a calm day this week, go and look at flowering Ivy – there is some close to you right now – and I promise that you will be blown away by the insect action.
One attractive bee is totally dependent on Ivy. Colletes hederae – the Ivy Bee – feeds mainly on Ivy flowers and so the adults can be seen in flight throughout the autumn. Ivy Bees only arrived in the UK around 20 years ago, but have spread rapidly through the southern part of the country.
Ivy Bees are solitary bees, meaning that they don’t live in highly organised colonies with a queen and worker bees. They have individual nests. But these can be clustered together in large numbers in light soils on south-facing slopes. They are common in and around Rye and can be seen easily right now.
The end of Ivy flowering isn’t the end of its value for wildlife. In mid-winter Ivy provides places for butterflies to hide and for bats to hibernate. The berries that ripen in late winter and early spring are full of fat, which is exactly what birds need when food is scarce and temperatures low. Come spring, birds will be queuing up to find nesting sites within it.
I just love the glossy foliage, especially after rain.
Undoubtedly, there are occasions when Ivy will smother ornamental trees that gardeners want kept unclogged. But, the long-reported downsides of Ivy are massively exaggerated, indeed they are mostly completely inaccurate.
Ivy can sometimes be prominent on dead and dying trees, but it didn’t lead to their demise, it just moved in as the disappearing leaf canopy provided more light and space for it to spread into.
Earlier this year the Kent Wildlife Trust made a plea for people to stop cutting through Ivy stems on their nature reserves. They correctly told the public that Ivy is not parasitic and doesn’t harm trees, it merely uses them for support as it grows. It’s frustrating that some old country myths persist, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
But the days when nobody had a good word to say about Ivy are surely over; the Royal Horticultural Society extols its virtues for wildlife and Historic England recognise its value in protecting buildings from the worst damages of extreme weather.
Ivy seems to be the junior partner in the Holly and Ivy Christmas double-act, but as the festive season approaches, maybe it’s time for that relationship to be re-evaluated.
Image Credits: David Bentley , Barry Yates .
First rate article… exactly right.