We’re used to English Ivy, that beautiful and enthusiastically invasive European import, as a solid mass of dark green leaves.

But it is a flowering plant, of course, and therefore it has flowers. After many years, when it has reached a certain height and maturity, it will send forth a multitude of stalks bearing clusters of clusters of little green flowers with a heady scent, something like linden-flower tea, that attracts insects of all sorts to pollinate them. Curiously the flowering stems bear leaves that no longer grow in the familiar lobed ivy shape; instead they are unlobed, rather diamond-shaped, or like an aspen leaf, and larger than the leaves on the rest of the vine.