Description
This climber spreads to 10–15 m, but it can also be a shrub to about 1.5 m. The small, greenish-yellow, inconspicuous flowers are borne in clustered, drooping, branched heads in the leaf axils in late summer. Red-brown to purple fleshy berries, approx. 15 mm in diameter, resembling “grapes” but tasting rather tart, ripen from autumn to winter. It is made into jam, jelly and vinegar . A relatively fast growing and vigorous climber that requires sun with some shade and compost-enriched soil to thrive. It grows well on fences as a screen and it can also be trained around a pillar for shading on a pergola, or allowed to make its way up into a tree or spread across the ground as an attractive groundcover in full sun and in semi-shade. It can even be allowed to form a small loosely stemmed shrub. Once established it will tolerate moderate frost and drought. The flowers have nectar that attracts bees and wasps. The name is derived fro the Greek rhoia, = pomegranate; kissos=ivy. Most plants in this genus climb and have tendrils, but the reference to pomegranate is obscure.
