Parthenocissus tricuspidata FB snippet

I am a nut for virgin vine, also sometimes called Japanese ivy, Boston ivy == Parthenocissus tricuspidata == for wall greening, urban cooling, etc. I've been observing it in an intentional way for over 10 years now. One of the good pcs of information I have to share is that it doesn't degrade intact masonry the way it is reputed to. That reputation belongs to Hedera helix, English ivy, and some other vines, but not to virgin vine. We have a masonry building owned by an environmental geologist that we've been observing for damage for 15 years or so, and there is none. A geologist would certainly be professionally qualified to inspect his own masonry! Of course, if you put in on masonry that has already degraded, the degradation will continue until properly repaired. What is most damaging to masonry is parching and the expansion and contraction of hot-cool cycling. Virgin vine conserves moisture and attenuates the hot-cool cycling.
There's a guy back East who claims that virgin vine is invasive but he's just plain wrong. The nursery varieties only propagate by rooted cutting or layering. He shows a picture of a vine running rampant on a forest floor, which I completely doubt is parthenocissus tricuspidata. It certainly isn't a nursery variety. I think he found another similar looking vine running rampant somewhere -- maybe crimson glory vine, which is related, more vigorous and does propagate from seed. If nursery varieties of virgin vine were going to escape, it would have done here in the Willamette valley, and there is none. By contrast, there is LOTs of hedera helix escaped all over the place and it is propagated by seeds in bird droppings. I offered to fly out and look at his example, and he quit responding to my emails. Unfortunately, some people have blindly taken up his false belief.
Virgin vine is actually not that easy to get started. Jay of Jay's Garage over here gave me three years to try to get it started in a patch of waste ground behind his building, with the idea of greening his hot box of a shop area. I was trying to do "proof of concept" for guerilla style plantings in an ultra-urban setting. Two nursery plants failed over the three years. On the other hand, once it gets a tap root down, it is pretty strong and needs little ground area. I've observed quite healthy plants growing in pavement openings as small as 12" in diameter. It needs loose soil with organic matter and watering for the first few years. It likes to have its feet cool and moist, but needs them to breathe, too, to get started successfully.
I have lots of pictures, including from some of us that are growing it on wood siding (no problems so far). Somewhere I have the Chinese paper which found a 25% savings in cooling energy cost and a 12% savings in heating energy cost for ivy coverage on exterior walls.
A friend nearby has a grape (parthenocissus tricuspidata is in the Vitis family, too) which he has had growing onto the roof of his conventionally shingle roofed garage. He has no significant damage to that shingle roof, although some might think the bare vines and debris that remain in winter are unsightly.
So, I want to share this information and pictures where people can make some good use of it. In my view, we should green all the concrete flatwork and masonry walls everywhere with it, and if it proves safe on other kinds of siding, then all of them! It has the great virtue of being something that can be done to many existing structures that are solar ovens. All one has to do is knock a 12 - 18" diameter break in the pavement next to the wall you want to green, improve the exposed soil (maybe remove and replace a couple of cubic feet) plant and water. A little bit of Miracle Grow doesn't hurt.
What's most meaningful to me is that this thing was cultivated for exactly this use == greening for cooling and habitat == in pre-industrial time. I consider it to be an "old way" that had been lost in the industrial - commercial era. Masonry buildings were routinely clothed in it as recently as the 1920's.