🔴 Invasive - Remove
English Ivy
Hedera helix
This is an invasive species that harms native ecosystems. It should be removed when found to protect local plant and wildlife habitats.
Hedera helix
This is an invasive species that harms native ecosystems. It should be removed when found to protect local plant and wildlife habitats.
English ivy smothers trees by blocking sunlight and adding weight, increasing the risk of broken branches or tree collapse. Over time, it can kill trees and spread to nearby forests, harming native plants and wildlife.
Colour and texture: Dark, glossy, leathery green with light grey-white veins. Once a vine reaches the canopy its leaves change completely (unlobed, diamond-shaped, matt) and only that mature growth flowers.
Flowers September–November; black berries ripen late winter into spring.
Rounded greenish-yellow flower balls on stiff, unlobed shoots high up the trunk, ripening into clusters of matt black berries the size of a pea.
Why it matters: Only ivy that has climbed high enough to go mature ever fruits, and those berries are what birds carry into new woods. A fruiting sleeve is the highest-value cut on the site.
A woody vine climbing a tree. This is the safe way to free a tree: you never pull a vine down out of a canopy.
Avoid: Do not haul the vine down. It is tangled into the branches, and pulling brings down deadwood on top of you.
Ivy or another creeper carpeting the ground, rooted at every few inches.
It can stay on site. Cut ivy can stay. Leave the high growth to die in the tree, and pile what comes down off the soil, because ivy roots from stems in contact with ground. Bag the black berries if the mature growth you cut is carrying any.
Avoid: Do not just cut the leaves off. Ivy regrows from the runners, and you have only made it harder to see.
Before the first cut: Cut a window a foot wide around the trunk and leave everything above it to die on the tree. Do not pull it down.
Thick old vines: use the on anything wider than your thumb and the on the rest, and cut through rather than prying the vine off the bark.
Next time: check the base of every tree you freed. Ivy re-sprouts from roots that were missed.