Summer Vacation

I'm on vacation now, a.k.a. no computers! However, I'll be taking a lot of pictures. I hope some of them are good enough to post.

My favourite variegated cultivars

Hedera helix 'Goldheart' is one of my favourite variegated ivies. For me, every plant should have dark green leaves and red petioles and branches. With 'Goldheart' you get yellow blotches, complementing the green and red, for free. At a shady spot it's like they illuminate!


'Yellow Ripple' is another favourite mine. I'm fascinated by the diverse leaf shape ivy displays. My ultimate goal is to propagate an ivy with the dissected leaves like Acer palmatum 'Dissectum'. 'Yellow Ripple' has beautiful Acer-like foliage. It's a pity it isn't that stable; it often shows 'Goldchild'-like leaves.


This is my all time favourite: 'Buttercup'. Although technically it isn't truly variegated, it is often listed as one. When the leaves become yellow it's like they're made of wax. It's like they're rigid and will break when touched.

Unnamed Cultivar nr.2

Unnamed cultivar nr.1 has some potential, but this one is a freak show candidate. It originated from a shoot I propagated vegetatively from a variegated ivy growing for tens of years at a cemetery. Actually this was the first ivy I propagated (August 15th, 2003). Naively I thought entire white leaves could be propagated and grown.

It took more than a year for the cuttings to develop. Before that, there wasn't any growth noticeable. I have to say I kept only two of the cuttings because they had potential. One eventually developed an entire white shoot. Unnamed cultivar nr. 2 developed a rather peculiar, very fasciated shoot, not at all with the leaf shape I kept it for.

The leaves are basically wavy and crinkled, almost folded in two. On the midvein grow small protrusions. The petioles are the cause of the folding. It looks like they are fasciated vertically: one 'petiole' grows on top the other. At the petiole attachment point the leaf 'tries' to correct that resulting in a twisted leaf shape. Because of the fasciated branches it is difficult to see let alone photograph. There are virtually no internodes. The appearance of the plant is therefore very bushy, almost like lettuce.

The leaf colour ranges from green to entire white. The four variegated leaves on the picture have a more silvery appearance. The basic colour is white. It is completely netted with tiny green lines. I like it and hope to propagate it some time. The relative position of the four mentioned leaves shows that this ivy doesn't grow opposite leaves. It has a so called altered phyllotaxis caused by the fasciation. I'll explain this phenomenon in the near future on my website 'English ivy covered' where I now write down my finds on variegation.

Unnamed Cultivar nr.1 (iii)

This is another leaf of my favourite unnamed cultivar. The leaf looks a lot like the ones in the first picture of June 3rd, 2006, but here there are lobes 'on the inside'. Because there is little room they push each other aside. This gives the leaf a 3-d appearance. Trailing shoots look very handsome while the leaves stay horizontal. I think the presence of the inner lateral lobes is, like the partial reversion (see the leaves in the picture of June 5th, 2006), evidence for the presence of 2 leaves (but I will still call it a leaf). At this point I don't know how that's possible.


Another observation I make is that these inner lobes look to be the basal lobes. The Lateral lobes of the leaf would therefore mimic terminal lobes and the actual terminal lobes lateral lobes... Another explanation could be that the sub-leaves have two terminal lobes like the leaf does.

Unnamed Cultivar nr.1 (ii)

One of the most intriguing effects of the double terminal lobe is reversion on one side of the leaf. This is truly bizarre! This fact raised my interest in plant -and leaf- development, variegation and fasciation. I write down my finds at 'English ivy (Hedera helix) Covered'. At this point I don't know the reason of the effect demonstrated by my unnamed cultivar.

Unnamed Cultivar nr.1

This unnamed cultivar is a find (March 1st, 2004). It is a mutation of Hedera helix 'Saggitaefolia'. Almost every leaf has two terminal lobes. A cultivar similar to it is H. h. 'Mariposa', but mine is much more stable. This kind of leaf shape sometimes has some interesting effects.


It occasionally grows a fasciated petiole. The more you feed it, the more fasciated petioles you get. Another drawback when feeding it to much is that young leaves get to soft and floppy. The fasciated petiole on the picture is some kind of stub. The part below the balloon-like petiole is in fact a branch. There is no sign of a bud! Afterwards the petiole develops a notch on the upper side.