Jeremy Bartlett's LET IT GROW blog

Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Cymbalaria muralis. Creake Abbey, Norfolk, 5th October 2020.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Cymbalaria muralis, is one of my favourite plants.

It brings cheer to old ruins and I admire the way it fills crevices with greenery and pretty Snapdragon-like flowers. We grow it in our garden but I mainly associate it with slightly crumbling old walls. It grows in many places in Norwich and I took the photograph above in early October at Creake Abbey, near Burnham Market in North Norfolk.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax has pretty, spurred flowers. These are produced over a long flowering season, normally from April or May until early October. It is a hardy perennial plant with evergreen, rounded to heart-shaped leaves and a trailing growth habit. Like Common Toadflax, Linaria vulgaris, which I wrote about in September, it is a member of the Plantaginaceae (the Plantain family) (note 1).

It has an unusual method of propagation. Initially Ivy-leaved Toadflax’s flower stalks are positively phototropic, and grow towards the light. But once they have been fertilised they become negatively phototropic, and grow away from the light. Ivy-leaved Toadflax ends up ‘planting’ its own seeds into the dark crevices of rock walls, where they are more likely to germinate. In this way, the plant can colonise walls vertically upwards. It can also reproduce vegetatively, rooting from fragments or from nodes. Richard Mabey describes it as “a delicate but aggressive creeper that trails over walls, banks and pavements” (note 2).

I always use the English name ‘Ivy-leaved Toadflax’ for Cymbalaria muralis, but there are plenty of others to choose from. These include: Kenilworth Ivy, Coliseum Ivy, Kentucky Ivy, Devil’s Ribbon, Oxford Ivy, Oxford Weed, Female Fluellen, Ivy Weed, Ivy Wort, Penny Leaf, Pennywort, Mother of Thousands, Roving Sailor, Wandering Jew, Climbing Sailor and Wandering Sailor (note 3). Cymbalaria means ‘like a cymbal’ and refers to the shape of the flower. The specific name muralis is a Latin adjective and means ‘of walls’.

Cymbalaria muralis is a native of mountainous areas in south and southwest Europe: southern Italy (including Sicily), Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It was introduced into the British Isles as a garden plant before 1602, and it was recorded in the wild from 1640 onwards. It may have started out as a rockery plant but it is now very widespread, growing on old walls and bridges, in pavements, and in other well-drained rocky and stony places, often near habitation. It is now our seventh most frequent neophyte (note 4). It has also been introduced into the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax is listed on the Plants for a Future website, which says that the leaves have been used in salads. On the plus side they are available all year round and they are described as being “acrid and pungent like cress”. But I haven’t been at all tempted to try them because they are “rather bitter and not very pleasant” and “might be toxic“. Externally the plant has been used to make a poultice on fresh wounds to stop  bleeding. There are also reports that it has been used in India to treat diabetes. But I think the best use for the plant is to brighten up old walls.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax makes a good wall, hanging basket or rock garden plant. It prefers a sunny spot but has been growing happily around the base of our north-facing conservatory for the past seven years, though it flowers less here than in full sunshine. I grew my first plant from a fragment of stem, which I rooted in a small vase of water – I find non-flowering stems work best. It is usually difficult to dig up a whole plant from a wall because its roots go deep into crack in a walls and pavements. But you can also buy plug plants and seeds online.

When they aren’t visiting Catmint flowers, Four-banded Flower Bees (Anthophora quadrimaculata) are partial to Ivy-leaved Toadflax flowers and I’ve seen them visiting the flowers in our back garden and elsewhere in Norwich, such as on the churchyard wall outside St. Giles’ Church. But my favourite combination of Ivy-leaved Toadflax and wildlife is in Ventnor Botanic Garden on the Isle of Wight. Here, in the warmer months of the year, Common Wall Lizards (Podarcis muralis) hunt for prey on warm, sunny walls, darting back into the cover of Ivy-leaved Toadlax when disturbed.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax and Wall Lizard (Podarcis muralis) in Ventnor Botanic Garden, Isle of Wight, 20th May 2016.

Notes

Note 1 – In his Flora, Clive Stace treats Cymbalaria, Linaria, Antirrhinum, Misopates, Veronica (Speedwells), Digitalis (Foxglove) and several other genera as the family Veronicaceae (Speedwell family).

Note 2 – Richard Mabey (1996): “Flora Britannica“, Sinclair-Stevenson, London. Page 331.

Note 3 – There are references for many of the English names on the Germplasm Resource Information Network (GRIN) Global website.

Some of the names come from places where the plant grew. Writing in the 1830s, William Baxter suggested that some Ivy-leaved Toadflax seeds had been accidentally introduced to Oxford with some marble sculptures from Italy. He remarked that the plant had “established itself… on the walls of the Colleges, gardens &c… in abundance” (see note 2 above).  Hence the name ‘Oxford Weed’.

Kenilworth Ivy is presumably named after Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire and ‘Coliseum Ivy’ because the plant grew on the ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. In France the plant is called ‘ruine de Rome‘.

Other names refer to the plant’s wandering growth habit – Mother of Thousands, Roving Sailor, Wandering Jew, Wandering Sailor – and the ‘Ivy’ and ‘Penny’ names refer to the shape of the leaves.

Note 4 – See p173,  “Alien Plants” by Clive A. Stace and Michael J. Crawley (Harper Collins, 2015). Neophytes are plants introduced to the British Isles after 1492.