Ivy

Ivy is a common creeping and climbing plant, native not only to the British Isles but to many parts of Europe and beyond. The Latin name of it is hedera. it is an evergreen, and bears its strong bright leaves even in the depth of the blackest winter. For this reason it has by custom immemorial been brought into the home at Christmas to deck the halls, along with holly - holly represents masculine strength, and ivy feminine grace.

According to ancient tradition, ivy has strong associations with magic and magicians - indeed a magician might use it to bind his or her hair, as poets were crowned with laurels[2]. It is presumably because of this custom that John Uskglass is depicted wearing a crown of ivy in his picture done at Windsor by Verrio[32] (although whether the King ever went so attired is a matter for conjecture:we must make allowances for the effusions of the artistic mind). It is also for this reason that the young woman whose murder so agitated the stone figure in York Minster, when Gilbert Norrell temporarily conferred on it the power of speech, is supposed by some to have been a magician. The statue describes her merely as "a young girl with ivy leaves in her hair"[3].

Jonathan Strange experiences what appears to be a premonition of his incarceration in the Pillar of Darkness when at Piacenza he sees an urn with some straggling strands of dead ivy issuing from its neck - a commonplace sight which nevertheless fills him with a sense of misery and loss. He is so struck he mentions the experience in a letter to Henry Woodhope[50].

Ivy was also one of those members of the vegetative kingdom with which John Uskglass forged a treaty of defence (the plant promised to bind England's enemies)[35]. In this particular it is instructive to note that hard upon the death of Christopher Drawlight "Strands of ivy were winding themselves about his neck and chest"[62].