Monday, March 07, 2011
RECENTLY every morning round here has started with a white frost, but strong sunshine has melted it all by about 11am and tempted me out to look for signs of growth in the garden and to pass judgement on plants that may or may not have been killed by the harsh winter.
There are some signs of life, though everything is very late. I have an amazing crop of ivy seedlings in flowerbeds, vegetable plots, the herb garden and the containers on the patio. Two dark green leaves and, when they’re pulled up, a long single root penetrating ten or 15 centimetres into the soil.
Ivy is probably the most divisive plant in Ireland. People either love it or hate it. I’m an ivy lover — but it is not an unqualified love, which is why I am pulling up these little seedlings.
The seed leaves of ivy are rather odd — long, fleshy and very pale green. The first true leaves are much darker and the familiar three-lobed ivy leaf shape, a bit like a maple leaf. But the plant produces a third type of leaf on mature shoots that are ready to produce flowers and fruits. These are an intermediate green and boat-shaped, without any lobes.
Other plants do the same thing. Young eucalyptus leaves look nothing like mature ones and a large holly only produces the familiar prickly leaves on its lower branches, higher up there are normal leaves with no spines.
It’s relatively easy to understand why hollies do this. They need the prickly leaves to deter browsing animals (though they certainly don’t deter sheep, as I once discovered when I tried to grow hollies in a sheep field). But above the browse line, which would be about 2.5 metres for a large red deer on its hind legs, the spines become superfluous and it can revert to normal leaves.
But why does ivy produce these two very distinct leaf types? There must be some evolutionary advantage but I can’t work out what it is — any suggestions will be gratefully received.
I reckon the reason I have an unusually heavy crop of ivy seedlings sprouting in my garden is that the hard winter made the ivy berry crop vital to the birds. They ate every berry and excreted the seeds all over the garden. One of the reasons I love ivy is that it is a back-to-front plant. Unlike most of our flora, it flowers in the autumn and fruits in the spring.
So when my queen bumble bees are getting ready to hibernate in October the ivy flowers produce a cornucopia of pollen and nectar to feed them for the winter. And, in March, when practically all the other hedgerow fruits have been eaten, the ivy berries ripen to sustain the wild birds through the most difficult period of the year.
Squirrels also eat ivy berries. Wood mice, when they’re hungry, are remarkably good climbers and can be found berry picking at dizzying heights. Ivy has other merits too. Our native flora has few evergreen trees and shrubs. But the ivy festooning a bare ash in the winter provides a warm roosting spot for small birds and conceals the nests of species that breed early in the year. Later on bats will use the same shady spots as daytime roosts.
But as a man with a large garden who tries to keep it wildlife friendly I have to temper my admiration for ivy with a little common sense. It can get out of hand. So I am down on the ground, the dampness is seeping through the knees of my jeans, and I’m looking for those little two-leaved seedlings and pulling them out with no compassion.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
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