Ivy 'protects buildings' by regulating temperature

Ivy 'protects buildings' by regulating temperature

"False friendship, like the ivy," the explorer Sir Richard Burton once said, "decays and ruins the walls it embraces." But the man who translated One Thousand and One Nights into English may have been doing the much-maligned creeping plant a disservice. Research from Oxford University suggests that, far from decaying walls – as has long been thought – it actually protects them.