Virginia Creeper

click photo to enlarge
In England early November is often the best time to appreciate leaves displaying the colours of autumn. If the temperatures have been favourable ornamental cherries show reds, oranges, browns and yellows at their best. The horse chestnut glows with oranges, browns and yellows - at least those that haven't succumbed to the leaf miner moth do. Beech trees turn to hard gold, and limes to soft yellow. And on the houses and garden walls the Virginia Creeper's glossy leaves show mainly red, but with almost black patches of purple and paler flecks of yellow adding subtlety to their transformation of the bricks and stone they cling to, outshining all the other plants as they reflect the pale autumn light.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Autumn Virginia Creeper
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 250
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Almost gone

click photo to enlarge

The house that hides beneath this almost all-enveloping covering of Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) - also known as Boston Ivy - is of an age and kind found throughout Britain. It is a three-storeyed, three bayed structure with a symmetrical facade that dates from about 1830. The six-panel door (with rectangular overlight) is placed centrally between two ground floor, single-canted bay windows. The first and second floor have three windows, those at the top being smaller. To left and right are gable chimney stacks. In the winter of 2001, when it was photographed for archive purposes, the front of the house looks like it has a delicate fretwork of branches across all of its Flemish bond brickwork. A year or two ago when the Google Street View cameras captured it the Virginia Creeper appears to have been cut back, but then has re-grown and spread to the point where it is covering more than half of the facade and has reached the gutter. When I took my photograph a week ago there was little left to see of the front of the house apart from the door, the ground floor bays and the windows peeping through the luxuriant leaves. Will it completely disappear from view - one window has almost gone? Will the leaves be cut back from the windows to prevent them from disappearing? Will it simply be heavily pruned back to ground level? Or will the owner decide to remove the plant completely and try something a little less vigorous? Whatever course of action is chosen it won't be easy. I'll make a point of looking to see what happens next time I'm in Spilsby.

What did make me smile was the net curtains that covered the lower half of the first storey windows. Their job of giving a little more privacy to the occupants has been largely superseded by the spreading leaves.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 73mm (146mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3 Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On