Boston Ivy Traditional Cache

Boston Ivy is on the old Forest Home School house, which used to be the main office for Cornell Plantations. Visitors can park one hour for free and for a fee during the week. It's free weekends, and evenings I suppose.

Boston ivy

Parthenocissus tricuspidata is a flowering plant in the grape family (Vitaceae) native to eastern Asia in Japan, Korea, and northern and eastern China. Though unrelated to true ivy, Japanese creeper, grape ivy, Japanese ivy, and woodbine (though the latter may refer to a number of vines).

It is a deciduous woody vine growing to 30 m tall or more given suitable support, attaching itself by means of numerous small branched tendrils tipped with sticky disks. 

The leaves are simple, palmately lobed with three lobes, occasionally unlobed or with five lobes, or sufficiently deeply lobed to be palmately compound with (usually) three leaflets; the leaves range from 5 to 22 cm across.

The flowers are inconspicuous, greenish, in clusters; the fruit is a small dark blue grape 5–10 mm diameter.

The specific epithet tricuspidata means three-pointed, referring to the leaf shape.

Cultivation and uses

Like the related Virginia creeper, it is widely grown as a climbing ornamental plant to cover the façades of masonry buildings. This usage is actually economically important because, by shading walls during the summer, it can significantly reduce cooling costs.

It is readily distinguished from the Virginia creeper by the simple leaves (always palmately compound with 5 leaflets in Virginia creeper).

The plant secretes calcium carbonate, which serves as an adhesive pad and gives it the ability to attach itself to a wall without requiring any additional support. While it does not penetrate the building surface but merely attaches to it, nevertheless damage can occur from attempting to rip the plant from the wall. However, if the plant is killed first, such as by severing the vine from the root, the adhesive pads will eventually deteriorate to the point where the plant can be easily removed without causing any damage to the wall.

It is used on the brick outfield walls at Wrigley Field  of the Chicago Cubs.

Boston Ivy - 'Parthenocissus tricuspidata'

Boston Ivy is a deciduous vine with bluish fruits and bright red fall foliage. Boston Ivy is commonly used as a decorative addition for buildings. This means that it is most often used to grow on sections of buildings, walls, and fences for its aesthetic beauty. The glossy dark green leaves turn bright red in the fall.

Showy leaves are held late into fall or early winter. This vine does well in poor soil and can grow in shade to full sun. It is originally native to Japan but is very popular in the United States. Boston Ivy has been grown everywhere from Fenway Park in Boston to Dallas, Texas. Boston Ivy is unique in how it attaches to structures and surfaces. Unlike other ivies, such as English Ivy that attach with invasive aerial rootlets that can severely weaken brick and wood structures, Boston Ivy attaches to surfaces with tendrils tipped with sticky disks.

This means that that the plant effectively glues itself to structures without structurally damaging the surface. Because of this special quality, Boston Ivy is not only a safe addition to structures and buildings, but a wonderful energy saving plant - effectively shading buildings during the summer and allowing buildings to absorb heat during the winter thanks to its deciduous nature.

The cache is a tied in, camoed, "micro" pill bottle, that you have to push hard to open and close. Please BYOP and put everything back as you found them. Please let me know if something seems out of whack.