Gardendaze

Have you ever seen English ivy fruit? This is why it’s listed as invasive in many climates. Here in Connecticut it has not run rampant yet. If our winters continue to be warmer, that may change.

But fruiting English ivy allows birds to spread it to other places. Still, that’s the least of the issues. Notice, in the top photo, how abundant it is on that maple. The weight of those vines is quite something, which we only discovered as pieces of them have been dislodged over the years in various storms (yes, these are my trees ). In certain instances, when the vines have come down, we have had to cut them into pieces to move them.

So when ice or snow builds up on these vines, it makes them even heavier. It’s enough to topple trees, although so far ours still stand.

This Virginia creeper, lovely as it is, and great for the birds, with lots of berries, also loves trees. Here it’s just scrambling over our woodpile. We fight constantly to keep it from our dogwood. Right plant, right place.

You can see it climbing up on our pines in the photo. It won’t do any harm if it get on the trunk. It would have quite a way to get into the canopy. If that happens, it can be cut back. On these trees, there’s not a lot of low branches like the dogwood.

Many times over the years , after storms have brought down trees, vines in the canopy were blamed. We try to manage our trees so that no vines get into and over the canopy, weakening them, and making them susceptible to wind, ice, snow and other weather issues.

But of course, trees are living things and you can’t manage everything. You just hope that you have prepared as best you can before the storms come.