Banished ivy lives on in homes throughout the U.S.

In any other situation, Plectranthus verticillatus probably wouldn’t catch your eye. The generally unremarkable Swedish ivy has slightly shiny, smallish green leaves with scalloped edges and purple stems, all of which make it interesting enough, but not stop-you-in-your-tracks exciting. Put it on a mantel, however, and suddenly people take note.

Well, not any mantel. In this case, the most famous Swedish ivy in the world sits on the fireplace mantel in the White House’s Oval Office. Or at least it did.

The plant was first spotted in the ultimate place of botanical honor during Gerald Ford’s administration, and it has remained there during every administration since, appearing in photos marking important moments in American history. It was there for an Oval Office meeting of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and was immortalized in Bill Clinton’s official portrait.

So its absence was noted recently when the mantel was decorated not with the familiar plant but gilded artifacts during President Donald Trump’s contentious meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

But there’s good reason to rest easy. The Swedish ivy — which is native to South Africa — wasn’t the latest victim of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. It’s hanging out in the White House greenhouse, according to a Washington Post story.

And it’s also in homes across the country. The plant is easy to propagate through cuttings, and bits of it have been given to White House staffers for years. Those people have, in turn, passed along cuttings from their own plants.

Rico Gardaphe, who worked in the Office of Presidential Correspondence during Barrack Obama’s administration, has run the Instagram account @ovalofficeivy since 2021, where he shares historic photos of the plant, or of the people in front of the plant, its offspring and even propagation techniques.

He told the Washington Post that he’s given cuttings to about 50 people he worked with and keeps track of them on a spreadsheet.

Based on photos of the plant in the Oval Office throughout history, which show the ivy in various states ranging from a tightly clipped plant stretching the length of the mantel to a clump bordering on disheveled, Gardaphe isn’t the only one with a large collection. It’s a pretty good bet that there’s quite a few backups on standby in the greenhouse, and if I had to guess, they were swapped in and out frequently when on display.

Plectranthus cuttings root easily in soil with or without rooting hormone, or even in water on a windowsill. And that’s good news because it means that even if the White House plant falls out of favor with the resident of the Oval Office and it is ordered to the compost, it will continue to live on in the hundreds or perhaps thousands of plants grown from it.

Its progeny live on in places from Brooklyn apartments like Gardaphe’s to the north woods of Wisconsin. That’s where an enormous plant grown from a cutting of the White House plant is living its best life, according to a photo on the Instagram account.

If anyone knows the owner of that plant, put in a good word for me. I have the perfect mantel for it.