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The Color Contributor Holly

Broad-leaved evergreens are choice plants for a garden, where they are valued for their permanence and particularly for their color contributions to the winter scene.

American holly is one of these. Its fine qualities are now recognized. There are American hollies in Tower Grove Park in St. Louis which are over 100 years old. Over a century they have been subjected to heat and drought, wet seasons, extreme cold, ice storms and city smoke. This is indicative of the ability of this holly to withstand the changing climatic conditions.

The native habitat of American holly (Ilex opaca) is along the eastern seaboard from Massachusetts to Florida and inland as far as Texas. It is listed as native to southeastern Missouri but is pretty much extinct there. One of the hardiest hollies, it will survive winters as far north as the Iowa-Missouri boundary, but beyond that it might be subject to winter injury in some years. Much interest in holly is centered in Maryland and New Jersey. The Holly Society of America, organized in Baltimore in 1947, is a very lively organization. Holly experts have recognized the superior qualities of certain trees in the East, have named and propagated them, and these are now available as pot plants.

In addition to the American holly, there are several other evergreen hollies that are fairly hardy: crenata or Japanese holly – a black berried kind; and cornuta with its well-known variety ‘Burfordi.’

Not so many years ago just like the sago palm plant, holly was seldom planted because it was considered difficult to transplant and grow. Hollies were raised from seeds and since the sexes are on separate plants there was an interval of many years before one could tell which trees would have berries. A red-berried holly tree is a cheerful sight in winter, so naturally when one plants a holly one hopes it will be the fruiting kind.

It is evident that to have a holly certain to be laden with berries in the winter, we must plant only those which have been propagated by cuttings from trees that are known to produce berries. Many named varieties, propagated this way, are now available from nurserymen. A few such varieties are listed at the end of this article. Furthermore, to insure a good crop of berries, one of the trees in the group must be a male tree (unless there is already one in the neighborhood). The bees are the chief transfer agents of the pollen, which they unwittingly carry from flower to flower in their search for nectar. Thus the flowers on the pistillate, or female, trees are pollinated, and the tree will set fruit.

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