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Senecio angulatus
Also called Cape Ivy, Climbing Groundsel, Creeping Cape Ivy, Creeping Ragwort
Creeping groundsel (Cape ivy) is a scrambling, succulent-leaved climber from South Africa, grown for its glossy foliage and sweet-scented flowers. It spreads aggressively by stems and is a serious weed in many warm regions, so contain it in the garden.
Senecio angulatus, also known as creeping groundsel
and Cape ivy,
Due to its drought-tolerance and succulent nature, Cape ivy thrives in areas with a Mediterranean climate, where it has been cultivated in parts of North Africa, Southern Europe and the Levant.
Seeds are reported to be unviable and that the predominate mode of dispersal is vegetative reproduction. In a 2001 Wellington study, artificially pollinated stigmata varnished with aniline blue under a UV microscope displayed that a low number of pollen grains corresponded to the stigmatic surface. Callose occurred in the few pollen tubes that did adhere to the surface, hinting the presence of a sporophytic self-incompatibility mechanism, which aids the theory that S. angulatus and Delairea odorata consist of a single genotype (or are set for a single S allele), thus seed is incapable of being produced.
Cape ivy is native to the Cape Province in South Africa, hence its name, where it is found scrambling over coastal brushwood and forest margins from East London to KwaZulu-Natal. Within South Africa, it is generally found in Drakensberg grassland, Eastern Fynbos-Renosterveld, Southern Afrotemperate Forest and the Albany thickets.
Lavender Steps · Vertical Leaf · Canary Creeper · Threadleaf ragwort · Fireweed groundsel · Natal Ivy · Madagascar ragwort · Curio × peregrinus · Climbing Senecio · Canary Ragwort · Senecio tropaeolifolius · Groundsel
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Senecio angulatus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
