{"id":184,"date":"2009-12-14T06:05:19","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T14:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=184"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"the-duality-of-holly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/the-duality-of-holly\/","title":{"rendered":"The Duality of Holly"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE DUALITY OF HOLLY
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>There are certain times when I dislike the large holly trees in my front yard.\u00a0 I curse their spiny leaves when I have to get on my knees and weed the beds in their vicinity.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter how thick the gloves are or the kneepads, I invariable get stabbed many times.\u00a0 Fallen foliage is no better.\u00a0 Even when the leaves are brown and dried, the prickles remain intact and dangerous.\u00a0 The prickle peril is also constant when I prune stray branches and dispose of them.\u00a0 On occasion I tell myself that I have met barberries with better dispositions than my English hollies.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pain also stabs at me every other year when I pay the tree surgeon to come and give my hollies a thorough trimming.\u00a0 The large bushes could easily obscure the second story windows and climb towards the roof, if left to their own devices.\u00a0 Branches that droop to the ground also tend to root themselves, protected by the ample leaf litter.\u00a0 I would rake out the leaf litter more often, but then I would be stuck–literally and figuratively–with spines again.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Despite all of the above, you can’t beat holly for beautiful foliage, vigor, value as a habitat plant and the absolute necessity of having it at this time of the year.\u00a0 In fact, it is probably a form of Christmas sacrilege to disparage holly at all.\u00a0 I have a strong suspicion that my punishment for casting aspersions on holly is that the next time I go out on a windy day, one of my own trees will probably smite me with a berry-laden branch.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are over 400 holly species in the world, including about fifteen native to North America.\u00a0 The best known holiday hollies are cultivated varieties of Ilex aquifolium or English holly.\u00a0 The Latin descriptors are especially apt.\u00a0 “Ilex”\u009d is the name the Romans originally bestowed on another evergreen tree, the Holm oak, now known as Quercus ilex.\u00a0 The Holm oak, native to the Mediterranean, has shiny, dark green leaves that are toothed on the edges.\u00a0 It is little wonder that when the Roman Empire expanded into northern Europe, they called native evergreen holly “Ilex”\u009d as well.\u00a0 The species name, “aquifolium”\u009d, means “with pointy leaves.”\u009d
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes Ilex opaca, an American holly, is also used for seasonal decorations.\u00a0 While its leaves are not quite as showy as those of English holly, the berries are just as decorative.\u00a0 Ilex meservae, the “blue holly”\u009d, is also popular.\u00a0 Its leaves are a little less spiny than those of some other hollies and the color tends towards the bluish end of the blue-green spectrum.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of my favorite hollies is winterberry holly, Ilex verticillata.\u00a0 Unlike many of its relatives, winterberry is deciduous and looses its leaves when cold weather sets in.\u00a0 The long stalks are naked except for the bright red berries, and many flower arrangers consider the winterberries even more beautiful than their evergreen relatives.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Holly and Christmas came together by way of the Roman feast of Saturnalia.\u00a0 When the Romans arrived in northern Europe, they found that holly was already important to the Celts and possibly the Druids.\u00a0 Held in esteem because of its evergreen nature, holly also had spiny leaves that, according to many sources, were thought to be helpful in warding off evil spirits.\u00a0 Saturnalia, a harvest festival held around the time of the winter solstice on December 21, included holly decorations, sometimes paired with ivy, as in the old carol, “The Holly and the Ivy.”\u009d\u00a0 Early Christians adapted Roman and pagan traditions and rituals and holly came to be associated with Christmas, the Christian feast closest in time to Saturnalia.\u00a0 Holly acquired a great deal of Christian symbolism in the centuries that followed.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to grow holly for holiday decorations or because of its virtues as a landscape plant, you will have to acknowledge the realities of plant sex.\u00a0 To get the brilliant red berries, you need both male and female plants.\u00a0 One male can pollinate several females and the male in question can belong to a neighbor, as long as it isn’t too far away.\u00a0 Insects do the actual pollination.\u00a0 The female plants produce the berries.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My mother used to go mad with holly at Christmastime, reveling in her English heritage.\u00a0 She filled the house with holly-spiked arrangements and gave boxes of branches as gifts to friends.\u00a0 Even the grandfather clock wore a holly wreath atop its bonnet.\u00a0 In keeping with our holiday traditions, we gathered all the desiccated holly on Twelfth Night and burned it along with regular logs in the fireplace.\u00a0 To keep that spirit alive this season, I will combine English and variegated hollies from my garden into arrangements for the house and a kissing ball for the living room doorway.\u00a0 The holly leaves stab me in December as surely as they stab me in June, but somehow the pain is much more bearable at holiday time.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to grow holly, a good place to shop for some of the best varieties is ForestFarm, 990 Tetherow Road, Williams, OR 97544; (541) 846-7269; <\/font><\/font>www.forestfarm.com<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Catalog $5.00.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE DUALITY OF HOLLY \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are certain times when I dislike the large holly trees in my front yard.\u00a0 I curse their spiny leaves when I have to get on my knees and weed the beds in their vicinity.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter how thick the gloves are or the kneepads, I invariable get stabbed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}