Ivy is really not a very good houseplant. It does not like heated indoor winter air, which always seems to lead to spider mites. I have found Algerian ivy is a little easier to work with (it has red stems and is rather pricey). Plan to spray regularly with a horticultural oil to keep the mites at bay. Life will be a lot easier if you try a pothos instead. Watch out for cold damage when you buy any plants in the winter. Taking a plant out of a nice warm greenhouse into a frigid parking lot and car can cause damage and even death fairly quickly.

Dori and I recognize that the big odds favorite answer for "What ails my ivy" is spider mites - if it actually IS an ivy ..... and Jake hasn't yet been back to let us know that. It could also easily be a watering issue - too much/too little - or a salt build-up from improper watering .... Someone upthread said, "Typically, if you leave the sick or dead parts of a plant on, the plant will focus a good deal of its energy on those areas rather than producing new growth" I just wanted to point out that this isn't so. Plants are shedding organisms. When a part of the plant is using more energy than it produces, the plant isolates and sheds these parts. Before it sheds them, usable nutrients and bio-compounds that are mobile in the plant are actually 'withdrawn' from the parts that are being shed and translocated to other areas of the plant. Of course, dead areas are just that - 'dead', and there is no energy flow in or out of them. They are simply shed parts that haven't yet been physically discarded by the plant. Al

Georgia-rose, Your statements about H hibernica and H helix are actually incorrect for Tennessee and Georgia. I am aware that they are correct for many areas in the US, but they aren't for around here. I've talked to taxonomists and researchers that have looked into this specific claim. They found it to be untrue for this area (all of Tennessee and at least the upper half if not all of GA). H helix, NOT H hibernica, is the widespread invasive ivy in this area. In fact, H hibernica hasn't been shown (at least so far) to be invasive at all in Tennessee (which is kind of weird, I guess). Unfortunately H helix is more commonly sold here than H hibernica. If you got your info from Horticulture Magazine a few months back, take a look at an example of the letters they got in the next few issues. Whoever wrote that article just didn't know what they were talking about. Come to think of it, this is a good example of how invasives aren't invasive everywhere and how some plants that seem pretty tame in one place can be very troublesome in others. _______________________________________ Jay, It's obvious, from your comments, that you don't really have a firm understanding of what invasive plants are all about. When you claim that you know more about which plants are invasive than the foremost experts on the subject in your state, all of which probably possess doctorates in related fields, that pretty much says it all. And, BTW, I am very familiar with bamboo, both running and clumping varieties. Many of the runners are quite aggressive, but few are seriously invasive. I am certainly no bamboo expert, but at least I am familiar enough with it to know that most species are NOT considered invasive here by the REAL EXPERTS. Seriously, you ought to take a little time and look into just what invasives are and the problems associated with them. Believing that you can somehow control the problems associated with invasives with pruners, an axe, or a machete is misguided, at extreme best! I know that some people overreact to the problems (that's true with just about any subject), but choosing to ignore them certainly isn't a valid solution.

Hot and dry is not going to be good for indoor ivy. Bright will be OK but not direct sun. It's actually quite hard to keep healthy indoors and often ends up with spider mites. The House Plant Forum often has people asking about difficulties with ivy.