Pelargonium peltatum is a scrambling perennial plant with five shallow or deeply lobed, circular- to heart-shaped, somewhat fleshy leaves, sometimes with a differently coloured semicircular band, that has been assigned to the cranesbill family.

[3] The ivy-leaved pelargonium is a perennial plant that scrambles over the surrounding vegetation and its somewhat succulent, slender and smooth, 3–10 mm (0.12–0.40 in) thick stems can grow to a length of about 2 m (7 ft).

The leaf blade has five shallow or deeper sharp or blunt tipped lobes that spread radially from a point with an entire margin.

[6] The ivy-leaved pelargonium was first described by Carl Linnaeus, based on a specimen that was growing in the garden of George Clifford III, in his 1753 groundbreaking book Species Plantarum, and he named it Geranium peltatum.

When Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle erected a new genus, Pelargonium, in William Aiton’s book Hortus Kewensis, published in 1789, he reassigned the species and made the new combination P. peltatum.

In 1796, the English botanist Richard Anthony Salisbury renamed P. lateripes to P. hederaefolium, which is therefore a superfluous name.

Henry Cranke Andrews in the first volume of his monography of the genus Geranium, that was published in 1805, distinguished P. peltatum var.

In 1824, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in his magnum opus Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis described P. lateripes var.

In 1835, Christian Friedrich Ecklon and Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher created a new genus, Dibrachya, which they had based on the section that Sweet had erected earlier, and made the new combinations D. peltata, D. scutellata and D. clypeata.

As part of his extensive 1912 treatment of several plant families, Reinhard Gustav Paul Knuth described a form from Pondoland as P.

van der Walt in 1984 considered the ivy-leaved pelargonium a pluriform species which includes plants that differ in the degree of succulence of the stems and leaves, the shape (circular or heart-shaped), the deepness of the incisions between the lobes, and the presence of a differently colored band in the leafblade.

They conclude that several names correspond to garden hybrids, i.e. P. hederinum and its varieties flore albo, variegatum and zonale, P. lateripes var.

[7] A study comparing homologous DNA indicates that the members of a group consisting of P. acraeum, P. ranunculophyllum, P. alchemilloides, P. multibracteatum, P. tongaense, P. barklyi, P. articulatum, P. frutetorum, P. inquinans, P. acetosum, P. zonale, P. aridum, “P.

The common name in Afrikaans is "kolsuring" (meaning cabbage sorrel) and refers to acid sap of the plant.

[8] In 1700, Willem Adriaan van der Stel, Governor of the Cape Colony, introduced the ivy-leaved pelargonium to the Netherlands.

The ivy-leaved pelargonium is cultivated on a large-scale for landscaping and as an ornamental plant for use in gardens and containers, as well as being used as a houseplant.