The Ivy you observed could be one of two species, with four cultivar names; Hedera hibernica ('Hibernica'), Irish or Atlantic Ivy) & Hedera helix 'Baltica', H.h. 'Pittsburg' & H.h. 'Star'. (English Ivy). All are similar in appearance and some expertise is required to distinguish the difference. Most propagaters refer to all of these as just English Ivy. Of the several species and hundreds of cultivars of Ivy, these are the only four that are deemed potentially invasive.
Ivy can only produce flowers and seed if exposed to sunlight. If grown in total shade it can be controlled by pruning and does not pose a threat to our native flora populations. The vast majority of the Ivy cultivars are slow growing and exhibit no tendency to becoming invasive.
Rb

Here is a link that might be useful: Hedera hibernica

The vast majority of the Ivy cultivars are slow growing and exhibit no tendency to becoming invasive.

The key word being "cultivar". I guess the rampant pest that covers much of Buckhead (or maybe it just seems like it) and established backyards around Atlanta is the species plant (Hedera helix).

esh_
It is most likely one or more of the species/cultivars mentioned above. See link below for some of the cultivars being produced commercially.
Rb

Here is a link that might be useful: Commercial Production of English Ivy

I had to laugh when I first read the opening post on this thread.
I was tempted to say - designed in hell and was spread when satan was kicked out of heaven. He threatened to spread the nasty stuff all over.....

but.......there are some people who like ivy (can you tell that I don't? LOL) and I wouldn't want to offend anyone so you may not find much stock in my short history lesson.

dora

Don't blame the plant, it is doing exactly what it's genes instruct it to do! Place the blame where it belongs, with the property owners, gardeners/landscapers that planted it and then failed to maintain it within reasonable bounds.

You could also place some of the blame with the Ivy League Schools, Yale, Harvard, Brown, et al, for popularizing the "weed" by plastering it all over the brick facade of many of their buildings.

I have grown as many as 65 different cultivars of Ivy at any given time, in pots, baskets, topiaries, troughs, etc. and not a single one of them flowered and produced seed or escaped cultivation.

They can be an attractive accent or stand-alone plant, if maintained properly. If you grow it, be a responsible gardener!

If you've got an ivy bed in your garden, you indeed may be responsible about it not getting out of control. But what happens when you sell your house? Who's to say the next property owner, or the next owner after that will be as responsible as you. There's no way. At some point your property will be owned by someone less conscientious than you. IMHO it's best not to plant invasive species at all.

I agree with the idea that it is the responsibility of the person who planted it, but that plant will live longer than you. I did battle with this evil stuff. It had taken over and had completely blanketed the forest like kudzu. Killed mature trees and everything in it's path and created a wildlife desert. To get rid of it is a serious strategy and isn't going to happen quickly. Took me years of hard hard work and was a huge fire hazard with all the paper-like dead vines in the trees. Ask me how I know - a neighbor caught the woods on fire and it was scary but that's another post. It takes years for the stuff to fall once cut back.

Anyhow, this ivy was originally planted with good intents by a little old lady who lived down the road. By the time I got to it, she was in her 90's. It grew through 11 acres once she got too old to manage it, although she did diligently in her youth.

It was bad bad bad and give me night terrors to think about the stuff. It's really not realistic to say you just need to be responsible and take care of it, you can't guarantee what the next person will do and there will be a next person. Count on it. Being responsible is a longer term goal when it comes to invasive in my opinion. I learned a lesson with that experience, go ahead and make me head spokesperson against planting anything remotely invasive. When you walk through the stuff, and it's up to your thighs (honestly) and there is no life at all, it can impress you you. It's a green wasteland. The future is more than the next ten years.

Seriously I now have this vine phobia. I can nervously grow clematis, that it. :D

I'm one of those who admire ivy, invasive and noninvasive forms, as a magnificent plant in itself and for its very, very long history of service and beauty in gardens around the world. It's very regrettable that some forms in our climate turn into monsters that give people night terrors, but still, it's lovely to see nice things said about ivy for a change. I only have a couple of the noninvasive varieties myself but want to try them all.

I'm like Rosie in having a deep fondness for ivy in all its forms and with all its vagaries. One of my favorite annual winter events is the ripening of the berries on the mature ivy in our oak trees with the subsequent feasting of the robins on those luscious, fermenting little bluish-black orbs. If you haven't enjoyed this avian gourmandizing, you're missing a real treat. The event has just unfolded here in Zone 7B SC. Binge and purge. Binge and purge. Now that the robins have binged, they will beshit new areas with ivy seeds, many of which will germinate and ensure the continuation of the species. Here, a running ivy carpet surely cuts down on lawn maintenance--so much so, that we've, more or less, retired our lawnmower. _Hedera colchica_, or Persian Ivy, is virtually as vigorous a grower as English Ivy. In fact, it may be more vigorous than English Ivy. It has huge, heart-shaped evergreen leaves with prominent veining and comes in a solid green-leaf strain and strains variegated with either white or yellow. When you crush its leaves, they emit the fragrance of celery. All in all, _Hedera colchica_ is a beautiful plant; but over time, it, too, will take over creation.

i appreciate and respect the plant; i DO NOT appreciate and respect nurseries that sell it without being blatantly and bluntly clear about the potential disaster it can cause with regard to dwellings and trees, and how insanely invasive and pervasive it can be.

i also don't appreciate folks who buy it up and plant invasive anything without thinking long and hard about the repercussions of their actions. i can't tell you how many times i've shied away from different plants after reading about their invasive/pervasive habit.

As one who has had to pull ivy out of natural areas (parks) where it was seeded in by birds, I can't tell you how much I appreciate people that let their ivy go to flower and seed!

And for those that don't know, ivy has both a juvenile and a mature form. Only the mature form flowers and sets fruit. Ivy develops into the mature form when it is allowed to climb up trees and other vertical surfaces. So when you let it climb up your trees, you are allowing it to develop into a fruiting monster.

So if you need to enjoy it, enjoy it responsibly and don't make the rest of the area suffer for it.

In gardening circles, there's an old saying about ivy: The first year it sleeps; the next year it creeps; and the next year it leaps. I'm sure all of us avid gardeners have heard that before. Why, then, should we expect warning labels on ivies or any other plants sold at nurseries or garden centers? Where should you draw the line? Violet vine, or chocolate vine, _Akebia quinata_ should definitely have a warning label, shouldn't it? After all, in the South, it's invasive. Pretty, but invasive. What about Carolina jessamine_ (_Gelsemium sempervirens_), which is poisonous if ingested? Or the various types of yucca, on which a tipsy or tottery person might easily impale him/herself? And then there's the oleander (_Nerium oleander_)--fatal if ingested or inhaled or consumed in some other manner. (Remember the fate of that poor road crew near Brunswick, GA, who inhaled the fumes of an oleander bonfire, keeled over, and died.) If warning labels were placed on all these, and other, plants, nursery and garden center customers would become scared witless of things botanical, and another facet of the American economy would be in trouble. As Dorothy Parker quipped about suicide in the poem "Resume": "Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramps. Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live."

Ivy and other plants like it need a warning label that it is invasive when allowed to climb. This has nothing to do with sleep/creep/leap - that is true of so many plants as they get established.

There are many invasive plants that should not be sold in nurseries - any form of ligustrum should not be sold. Yet states like Georgia have done nothing to ban the sale of them. Ligustrum, nandina, mahonia bealei, burning bush, barberry - these plants all create berries that are also spread by the birds. Some are generally more invasive than others and some are more invasive just in the right conditions (ligustrum thrives in a wet area like stream banks). Empress tree - long sold on the back of Parade magazine - should not be sold in certain states where it is known to be invasive. Mimosa should not be sold but a new cultivar has been created and is being sold.

People don't need to be scared of things botanical. The best thing for gardeners to do is to EDUCATE themselves. Thanks to the Internet, information is readily available. Plop the scientific name - or even the common name - into any search engine and voila! Don't be afraid to take something back if you bought it on impulse and then decided it was not something to keep.

Why, then, should we expect warning labels on ivies or any other plants sold at nurseries or garden centers?

I would respect a nursery so much if they DID put warning labels on certain plants. How helpful!

As far as The Empress Tree, aka The Princess Tree, (_Paulownia tomentosa_) is concerned, it has been making itself at home in North America far longer than _Parade Magazine_ has been hawking the tree to its Sunday newspaper readership. Lovely as that tree is, it has been breaking loose since colonial days when its light, fluffy seeds were used in shipments of Oriental chinaware to prevent the crockery from being broken in transit from the Orient to the American port cities along the Atlantic Seaboard. As colonial merchants unpacked the Oriental chinaware, those Princess Tree seeds hit the wind; and the rest is history.

Yesterday afternoon, on a four-mile trip from our farm to the grocery store, I made a point to observe escaped exotic plants in fields and the margins of woodlands. I observed one nandina (_Nandina domestica_) with clusters of red berries; a Chinese photinia (_Photinia serrulata_); several eleagnuses (_Eleagnus pungens_); and a little ivy. The eleagnuses were especially attractive in the deciduous woods scrambling up trees, the shrubs' leaves shining brightly in the cold winter sunshine. (We've had an _Eleagnus pungens fruitlandii_ growing at the end of the front porch for more than fifty years; and I may have been viewing some of her progeny. If so, her children hardly constituted an exotic plant plague. In a few weeks, the eleagnus fruit will ripen and provide needed late winter/early spring food for our songbirds. To me, the good outweighs the bad.)

Furthermore, it is not just exotic plants that escape and colonize. Thanks to our songbirds, _Magnolia grandiflora_, that beautiful Southeastern native, frequently escapes cultivation and repopulates the landscape, again adding a touch of beauty. Yesterday, I saw at least one magnolia escapee adding a pleasing touch to its new home.

True, empress tree has been around longer than the ad in Parade magazine.

I can't believe you didn't see any chinese ligustrum on the way to the store. That stuff is just choking the roadsides here. On the way to my local store, Tree of Heaven is quite common as well - but that often grows in localized pockets and my area is one. There are places where there is none of it ... yet. But always, ALWAYS chinese privet. People even think it is "native" - "oh, that's just ol' hedge", they say.

Natives don't "escape" in their natural range. Now it is possible that natives brought into one area from another might do that ... Southern Magnolia is a perfect example, as you said. It was a coastal plant that has adapted to other areas. In fact some foresters in the Piedmont area are quite against it as it has seeded into forests and displaced the original residents to some extent.

Just because someone doesn't personally observe an infestation of a given plant doesn't mean it isn't happening. Florida has a huge problem with Nandina; here is just starting. Oregon has a battle royale with English ivy, here the problem is more moderate, it really depends on the age of the infestation. Our biggest invader here is chinese ligustrum - it has disturbed more acres than kudzu. As I said, it is sneaky because people don't always realize what it is and leave it there.

Best advice to gardeners: do your research, ask questions and don't think that the stores have your best interest at heart - or the environment's.

Yes, there are beaucoups of privet hedge all over the place, and I've been fighting it for as long as I can remember. However, every time I take a machete to it, I think about our songbirds whom I'm depriving of one of their food sources. However, I hate privet hedge and go right a head and butcher it unmercifully.

Another absolute horticultural nightmare is _Pyrus calleryana_. It is not only an abomination because of its gross over-planting, its globe-shape, and its tendency to break up in ice storms but it also reseeds itself with reckless abandon. And apparently every seed is fertile. It is a true plague and has populated most of the eight-acre field adjacent to my house, which we're allowing to re-convert to forest. A true botanical horror.