Wintercreeper

The neat evergreen groundcover from the garden center that climbs, fruits, and carpets forest floors in a solid green mat. Widely sold, widely regretted - this entry is about recognizing it and getting it out.

How to recognize it and why never to plant it: opposite, glossy, silver-veined toothed leaves on an evergreen vine that roots as it creeps and climbs by rootlets - not English ivy, though it is constantly mistaken for it.

You should not plant wintercreeper, so what matters is telling it apart from everything else green on the ground in January. It is an evergreen woody vine with small, thick, leathery leaves — usually 1 to 2 inches, oval, finely toothed along the edge, dark glossy green, and marked with a distinctly pale silvery midrib and veins. The leaves are held in opposite pairs on the stem. It creeps flat across the ground, rooting wherever a node touches soil, and climbs trees, walls and fences by short clinging rootlets rather than by twining.

Three plants get confused with it. English ivy has alternate, lobed leaves with pale palmate veining; wintercreeper's are opposite, unlobed and toothed. Japanese honeysuckle also has opposite leaves, but they are untoothed and it twines around a support instead of gripping it. Vinca (periwinkle) has opposite untoothed leaves too, but they are larger, glossier and blue-flowered, and it does not climb. If it is evergreen, opposite, toothed, silver-veined and climbing by rootlets, it is wintercreeper.

It tolerates deep shade, full sun, drought, compaction, road salt and neglect, which is the whole reason it was planted and the whole reason it wins. There is no site where it will politely stay put.

How it spreads - and why the variegated cultivars are not safer: it roots at every node, reverts to plain green, only fruits once it climbs, and then birds carry the seed into woodland.

Wintercreeper spreads by three routes, and understanding them is the whole of controlling it. First, creeping stems root at the nodes, so a planting expands as a solid front and any fragment left behind or dumped in a brush pile re-roots. Second, once a stem climbs into good light it matures into an adult form — larger, thicker leaves, shrubbier growth — and only then does it flower and set fruit. Third, birds eat the fall capsules and disperse the seed into woodlots, fencerows and stream corridors far from any garden.

The nursery cultivars deserve a specific warning. 'Coloratus' (purpleleaf wintercreeper), the plain green form mass-planted on banks and highway margins, is the worst escapee. The variegated forms — 'Emerald Gaiety', 'Emerald n Gold', 'Moonshadow' and the rest — are slower and better behaved while they stay variegated, and that is the catch: they routinely revert to plain green, and the reverted growth is the vigorous, climbing, fruiting kind. A variegated cultivar is not a sterile or safe version of the species; it is the same plant with a temporary handicap. This is the Callery pear lesson in a groundcover.

Control, not care: cut climbers off trees and let the tops die in place, hand-pull ground mats in moist soil, treat cut stumps rather than spraying the waxy leaves, work in winter, and follow up for years.

For wintercreeper, care means removal, and the order matters. Save the trees first. Cut every climbing stem at the base and again at about chest height, and carry the middle section away so the two cuts cannot rejoin. Leave the growth above to die and fall on its own — ripping a rootlet-clad vine off a trunk tears bark. Climbing growth is also the only growth that fruits, so this single job cuts off the seed supply.

Then take the ground. Hand-pulling genuinely works on wintercreeper when the soil is moist: get a grip on a runner, follow it, and lift the rooted nodes as you go, rolling the mat back like a carpet. Small patches can be cleared for good this way. Bag the material and bin it — do not compost stems and do not dump them at the back of the property, because they re-root from cuttings. Then replant the cleared ground with something that will hold it: wild ginger, Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens, the native one), green-and-gold, partridgeberry, native sedges or ferns. Bare soil just invites the next invasion.

For a large mat, herbicide is the realistic option, with two practical rules. The waxy evergreen leaf sheds foliar sprays, so cut-stump treatment applied within a minute or two of the cut is far more effective on climbers, and foliar work needs a surfactant and repeat visits. And the timing is a gift: because wintercreeper stays green while native plants are dormant, late fall through winter treatment does the least collateral damage, as long as it is above freezing. Use a product whose label lists the site you are treating — woodland, landscape bed, lawn — and follow that label; the label is legally binding, not advisory. Whatever method you use, plan on three to five years of follow-up. Wintercreeper comes back from missed nodes and from the seed bank, and one clean sweep is never enough.

Not a food, and actively toxic - Euonymus fruits and seeds carry cardiac glycosides. Ecologically its contribution is negative: an evergreen mat that erases the spring wildflowers and tree seedlings a woodland depends on.

Wintercreeper is not eaten, and it is not merely inedible. Like other Euonymus, its fruit and seed contain cardiac glycosides along with irritant compounds: swallowing them causes vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramping, and a large quantity can affect heart rhythm. The bright orange seeds are conspicuous, sweet-looking and sit at knee height on a groundcover, which makes them a genuine risk around small children and dogs. If a child or pet has eaten them, call poison control or your vet rather than waiting to see what happens.

Ecologically it is a straight subtraction. A wintercreeper floor is evergreen, which means it shades the ground in March when trout lily, spring beauty, toothwort and trillium need the light before the canopy closes — the exact window those plants live on. It leaves no gaps for oak, maple and hickory seedlings, so a woodland with a wintercreeper floor has no next generation of trees. Its fruit feeds birds well enough to get itself spread, but it replaces a diverse understory that fed caterpillars, native bees and everything upstream of them with one plant that feeds almost nothing. Taking it out and putting natives back is the whole of its nutritional story.

Introduced from East Asia around 1907 and promoted for decades as a bulletproof evergreen groundcover for dry shade and erosion control - the toughness that sold it is exactly what made it an invader.

Wintercreeper reached the United States from East Asia around 1907, one of many ornamentals collected in China and Japan in that era. It was promoted for exactly the qualities that now define the problem: evergreen, shade-tolerant, drought-tolerant, deer-resistant, indifferent to poor soil, and cheap to establish over large areas. Through the middle of the twentieth century it became a standard specification for bank stabilization, highway margins, industrial landscaping and foundation plantings, often as the plain-green cultivar 'Coloratus', which was planted by the acre.

Escape followed slowly and then all at once. Mass plantings gave the species decades to reach fruiting size on nearby trees, and birds did the rest. By the 1990s land managers in Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana were describing forests whose entire floor had converted to wintercreeper, and it now appears on state invasive-plant lists and regional invasive-council lists across the Midwest, mid-South and mid-Atlantic. Regulation has lagged well behind the ecology — it is still stocked and sold in much of the country, and where states have restricted ornamental invasives the lists have changed quickly — so check your own state's invasive-plant and noxious-weed list before you buy, and understand that the absence of a ban is not a recommendation.

Confirm it (evergreen, opposite, toothed, silver-veined, climbing by rootlets), free the trees before clearing the ground, pull in moist soil, treat cut stumps in winter, and replant natives so it cannot return.

Is this wintercreeper or English ivy? Look at how the leaves attach. Wintercreeper leaves are in opposite pairs, oval, finely toothed, with a pale silvery midrib; English ivy leaves are alternate and lobed with pale palmate veining. Both are evergreen and both climb by rootlets, so the leaf arrangement is the check that settles it. What about periwinkle and Japanese honeysuckle? Both have opposite leaves but neither is toothed, periwinkle does not climb, and honeysuckle twines rather than gripping. Where do I start? On the trunks. Climbing growth is the only growth that fruits, so cutting the climbers stops seed production immediately, even before you touch the mat. Should I pull the vines off the tree? No — cut at the base and again at chest height, remove the middle section, and let the top die in place; pulling a rootlet-clad vine down strips bark. Will hand-pulling actually work? Yes, unusually for an invasive, if the soil is moist and you lift the rooted nodes rather than snapping runners. Small and medium patches are genuinely clearable by hand. Can I compost it? No. Stems re-root from cuttings and from dumped brush piles; bag it and bin it. I sprayed and nothing happened. The waxy evergreen leaf sheds foliar sprays — cut-stump treatment immediately after cutting is far more effective, and any herbicide must carry a label listing the site you are treating. When is the best time? Late fall through winter: wintercreeper is green while natives are dormant, so you can see all of it and hit it with the least collateral damage. Is the variegated one safe? No. Variegated cultivars revert to plain green, and the reverted growth is the vigorous, climbing, fruiting form. It came back. Expected. Plan on three to five years of follow-up, and replant the cleared ground with natives so bare soil does not simply invite it back.

Hardy and invasive across roughly zones 4-9, worst in the lower Midwest and mid-South; heat, cold, drought, shade and poor soil barely slow it, so climate is almost no limit on where it becomes a problem.

Wintercreeper is hardy roughly zones 4-9 and invasive across most of that range, which is part of what makes it so difficult — there are very few places in the eastern half of the country where you can assume it will not do well. Its worst documented impacts are in the lower Midwest and mid-South, in the woodlands of Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee, where whole forest floors have converted, and it is well established and spreading through the mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

Cold north (zones 4-5): it survives and creeps, though hard winters and heavy snow load slow the climbing growth and it fruits less reliably, so infestations build more slowly. Zones 6-8: the heartland of the problem — it climbs freely, fruits heavily, and birds do the rest. Warm South (zone 9): it persists and spreads but competes with a longer list of other aggressive evergreens. Dry West: it needs more water than an unirrigated western landscape provides, which is the one real climatic brake on it.

Everywhere it grows, the practical guidance is identical: do not plant it, learn the opposite toothed silver-veined leaf, walk your ground in winter when it is the only green thing standing, and clear it while the patch is still small enough to pull.