Virginia Creeper

Parthenocissus quinquefolia
Family: Vitaceae

Natural History

Virginia creeper grows on a wide variety of sites from moist and shady to open and dry. It is found in forest plantations, mature forests, forest margins, and is most plentiful in open mixed upland forests. Virginia creeper is found in most of the eastern United States between Texas and Florida in the south, to Minnesota and Canada in the north.

Songbirds are the principal consumers of Virginia creeper fruit but woodpeckers, thrushes, deer, squirrels, and other small animals also eat them. Cattle and deer sometimes browse the foliage. It provides cover for many small birds and mammals and is used for watershed protection and erosion control. The bark was once used medicinally.

Virginia creeper is a woody, deciduous vine that can be identified by its compound leaves with five leaflets. It has long leaf stems and climbs by tendrils with adhesive disks that look like the small suction pads on lizards' feet. If you pull a Virginia creeper vine off a wall, fence, or tree, the adhesive disks and parts of the tendrils remain stuck behind.