A few weeks ago, while walking on the cliff path at Shanklin, I spotted a family peering intently at the hedgerow.

They were fascinated by the many insects that were flying around the flowers of Common Ivy.

Ivy is one of those marmite plants that you either love or hate and there is a large amount of folklore that surround it.

It is our only truly evergreen climber or liana. It is not a parasite but manufactures its food by photosynthesis just like any other green plant.

Isle of Wight County Press:

The flowers of ivy are highly attractive to insects.

The ability to climb is due to small roots that appear on the stem. These are known as adventitious roots.

It has been found that ivy roots secrete a type of glue that lets it stick tightly to sheer surfaces. The roots also penetrate cracks in buildings.

Ivy is found everywhere. It grows up trees, covers walls and buildings, grows in hedgerows, woodland, waste ground and scrub but is also quite happy growing as a ground cover plant.

The scientific name is Hedera helix. Translated literally, Hedera means “to grasp” and helix means spiral so the name Hedera helix has the meaning “the clinging plant that coils in spirals”.

Ivy is in the Araliaceae or ivy family, a plant family that is found mainly in the tropics and has about 1,300 species worldwide. In the UK, its closest relatives are the garden plants Aralia and Fatsia.

Ivy leaves are of two types, depending whether they are juvenile or adult. The mature leaves are oval-shaped with no lobes while the juvenile leaves are typically heart-shaped with three to five lobes or leaf divisions.

Ivy flowers are produced from September right through until November. They are very distinctive, yellowish green in colour and appear in small dome-shaped clusters known as umbels.

The flowers are fragrant and produce much nectar and pollen late in the season which is why they are so good for wildlife.

The flowers are followed by large clusters of black, berry like fruits that persist long into the winter.

Isle of Wight County Press:

Ivy berries are an excellent source of food for wildlife.

The value to wildlife is amazing. The pollen, nectar and berries of ivy are an essential food source for insects and birds during the autumn and winter, when little else is about.

Bees, hoverflies and common wasps forage on the flowers before they go into hibernation.

Many rare insects are attracted to ivy flowers, including the golden hoverfly.

The berries, with their high fat content, are eaten by a range of birds including thrushes, blackcaps, wood-pigeons and blackbirds. Ivy also provides shelter for insects, bats, birds and small mammals.

In folklore, having a wreath of ivy around your head was thought to prevent you from getting drunk.

Ivy is also a symbol of fidelity and priests would present a wreath to newly married couples.

The Victorians loved ivy. They encouraged them to grow over summerhouses and bowers and even trained them through their homes. Queen Victoria wore a wreath of Osborne ivy intertwined with diamonds in her hair.

On the Isle of Wight, a sub species of ivy, Hedera helix ssp. hibernica grows particularly in the shelter and humid conditions of the Undercliff, where it develops large leaves.

Also a parasitic plant, the Ivy Broomrape (Orobanche hederae) grows on ivy.

It is found in woods particularly in the Undercliff area on the southern tip of the Isle of Wight and can be observed from April to July.