English ivy (Latin name Hedera helix) provides food and shelter for wildlife in the winter months. Blackbirds and robins, for example, eat ivy berries in the winter. It is also the host plant for the larvae of the second brood of the Holly Blue butterfly in the late summer (the other host plant is holly, on which the first brood feed in the spring).
Uploaded to Geograph by Edmund Shaw on 16 December 2014
Photo © Edmund Shaw, 16 December 2014. Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons licence