[3][8] Due to its drought-tolerance and succulent nature,[26][27] Cape ivy thrives in areas with a Mediterranean climate,[28] where it has been cultivated in parts of North Africa, Southern Europe[29] and the Levant.

[30] In Queensland, the plant may have increased in popularity following the Boer War, as there were anecdotal accounts that it was introduced from South Africa by the soldiers who returned to Australia after 1902.

Moreover, it was displayed in garden pillars in Brisbane newspapers between 1906 and 1910, praising the plant for the beauty of both its foliage and its yellow clusters of blooms.

Though these reports may have falsely applied the S. angulatus name to Senecio mikanioides, which was a weed at that time on the east coast.

[32] The plant was collected as a weed in Melbourne's southern suburb of Mornington in 1936, and was displayed in newspaper column submissions in areas between Bendigo and Swan Hill in the 1940s and 1950s.

In Melbourne metropolitan area, it became prevalent on coastal banks and on decomposed rock gullies of suburban creeks.

It has been naturalized in areas with the Mediterranean climate, such as those in, or proximate to, the Mediterranean Basin: South Italy (Sardegna, Sicilia), France (Corsica), Spain (including Balearic Islands, Canary Islands and Madeira), Croatia, Portugal,[13][32] Albania, Tunisia and Algeria.

[32] The plant prefers soils of black calcareous and grey sand, sandy clay and limestone, where it will be found in coastal areas on cliff faces, mudflats, wet depressions in dunes, near swamps, in landfills, scrubland and near settlements,[8] especially near the sea.

[3] Cape ivy is easily dispersed by wind-blown seed, stem fragments, dumped garden waste and by the expansion of the plant through runners.

[19] As such, the plant is targeted by the Oregon Department of Agriculture for early detection and fast response if it were to escape from cultivation.

[32] On the Costa Brava in Spain, it was one of the five most recorded species, where it was found in large assemblage, usually close to human residence, invading and colonizing the clifftops, roadsides and the proximate scrubland, including the undergrowth, replacing native flora species such as Pistacia lentiscus.

[41] Seeds are reported to be unviable and that the predominate mode of dispersal is vegetative reproduction – In a 2001 Wellington study, artificially pollinated stigmata varnished with aniline blue under a UV microscope displayed that a low number of pollen grains corresponded to the stigmatic surface.

[22] Callose occurred in the few pollen tubes that did adhere to the surface, hinting the presence of a sporophytic self-incompatibility mechanism, which aids the theory that S. angulatus and Delairea odorata consist of a single genotype (or are set for a single S allele), thus seed is incapable of being produced.