Atlantic Ivy

Atlantic Ivy has broader leaves than those of Common Ivy.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Hedera hibernica
Family: 
Ivies
Family Latin name: 
ARALIACEAE
Category: 
Flowering Plants

Species description

Species description

Unlike our native ivy, the leaves of this introduced ivy are not pointed, but broad with short terminal lobes.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)

Details

Species family information

The one member of this family native to the UK is the familiar common ivy, but it has many members in southeast Asia, where it is known as the ginseng family.

Category information

Nucleic multicellular photosynthetic organisms lived in freshwater communities on land as long ago as a thousand million years, and their terrestrial descendants are known from the late Pre-Cambrian 850 million years ago. Embryophyte land plants are known from the mid Ordovician, and land plant structures such as roots and leaves are recognisable in mid Devonian fossils. Seeds seem to have evolved by the late Devonian. The Embryophytes are green land plants that form the bulk of the Earth’s vegetation. They have specialised reproductive organs and nurture the young embryo sporophyte. Most obtain their energy by photosynthesis, using sunlight to synthesise food from Carbon Dioxide and Water.

The earliest known plant group is the Archaeplastida, which were autotrophic. Listing just the surviving descendants, which evolved in turn, we have the Red Algae, the Chlorophyte Green Algae, the Charophyte Green Algae, and then the Embryophyta or land plants. The earliest embryophytes were the Liverworts, followed by the Hornworts, and the Mosses. Then we have the Vascular Plants, the Lycophytes and Ferns, followed by the Spermatophytes or seed plants, the Gnetophytes, Conifers, Ginkgos, and Cycads, and finally the Magnoliophyta (Angiosperms) or flowering plants.