Azores ivy
Hedera azorica
Family · Araliaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The ivy endemic to the Azores, climbing laurisilva trunks and covering crater walls. It is told from common ivy by the star-shaped hairs on the underside of young leaves.
Oak woods · Walls and rocks · Streams and ditches · Uplands
Also known asAzorean ivy
How to tell it
A woody climber gripping with adventitious roots. Young leaves with five to seven lobes, far more deeply cut than common ivy's, and covered beneath with white star-shaped hairs, visible with a lens. Leaves on flowering shoots entire and diamond-shaped. Black berries in umbels. Range: endemic to the Azores.
What it is confused with
Common ivy
Hedera helix
Common ivy has three to five lobed leaves and flat scale hairs; the Azorean has five to seven deeper lobes and raised star hairs. Both species' berries are toxic.
Open sheet →What it is for
None. The berries are toxic and cause vomiting and abdominal pain, and the sap causes contact dermatitis on sensitive skin, as in common ivy. Ecologically it matters: it flowers in October, when almost nothing else offers nectar.