Progress in the arts is promoted in times of peace, and the history of gardening is an obvious manifestation of this fact.
During the reign of Queen Victoria, when Brittania ruled the seven seas and the swords of war were sheathed, the gardens of England flowered as never before.
The attention showered upon hollies by England’s noted nurserymen during the Victorian era was of special significance. In no other country in the world was the same loving care bestowed upon these beautiful and time-revered trees.
Competitive displays were held, with England’s foremost horticulturists receiving prized awards for introducing hollies of exceptional distinction and beauty.
Vying with one another, these English nurserymen searched far and wide to extend their collections to include many other species of Ilex from foreign lands.
Thus, in the years 1874-76, the English Gardeners’ Chronicle illustrated and described 153 named garden varieties of English holly in a monumental monograph by Thomas Moore.
This effort at holly nomenclature was followed in a noteworthy manner by the publication, in 1908, of Holly, Yew, and Box, compiled and written by Dr. William Dallimore while serving as curator of Kew Gardens in London.
English Holly Transported
Interestingly enough, the exportation of hollies from old England to the newly colonized country of the Pacific Northwest during 1850-75.
These transplanted hollies found such a salubrious climate and ideal soil for their growth that today, one hundred years later, many of Oregon’s inhabitants consider them trees native to their state.
During these past decades, many new varieties of forms have appeared in the Northwest until we have assembled a most creditable series of English holly varieties in Oregon and Washington.
English holly (Ilex aquifolium) may be described briefly as a tree-like shrub of dense, compact, and symmetrical growth with spiny, wavy leaves of the glossiest green.
The female or pistillate hollies produce clusters of bright red berries prized highly for their decorative value. The all-important male or staminate holly is admired for its luxuriant foliage.
Mutations and Varieties of English Holly
Before attempting any classification of the many garden varieties of English holly, the origin of the various varieties must be mentioned.
One of nature’s amazing phenomena is the curious capacity of vegetative growth to spontaneously mutate or change itself from its fixed habit to an entirely new form.
Such miracles or mutations are usually referred to as sports, and they may appear in seedling form or as unusual branches called bud sports.
Illustrations of holly seed sports are those producing yellow or orange berries in place of the usual red, the weeping or pendulous hollies, those with leaves of purest gold, and the many spineless or smooth-leaved varieties.
Bud sports occur when a terminal bud swells to bursting in the spring season and, willy nilly, as if from nowhere, there emerges a pixelated branchlet garbed with color or form which is distinctly different.
Diverse Displays of Color and Form
Thus, through nature’s creative handiwork, our gardens have been endowed with a dazzling display of gorgeous hollies arrayed in the brightest silver and gold.
When Mother Nature turns herself loose with abandon, her miracles to perform, we are permitted to perceive the ultimate in bizarre and unusual coloration and the grotesque in form. Truly, the hollies have been nature’s willing subjects, ever yielding to her whims and caprice.
Most of the colorful mutants appear as bud sports and may be classified as follows: first, the margins of the leaves are edged or banded with silver or gold and known as the Marginates.
The second group is known as the “mediopictas” which are varieties where the individual leaves are centrally (Medio) illuminated or painted (picta) with either silver or golden coloration.
The first group of these hollies, the marginates, is the more fixed or constant, and seldom do they revert to the form of their parent.
The mediopictas, where the coloration is confined to the leaf centers, are fickle and frequently send forth branches corresponding to those of the holy of their origin.
Numerous Variations
Among the bud sport variants, we find dwarfed hollies, those with diminutive leaves, spiraled or twisted leaves, leaves in two shades of green, and those with upper leaf surfaces coated with spines.
Then there are hollies with giant leaves and with leaves so cruelly contorted that they appear to be carrying the cross of a warped disposition.
Golden Hollies
Nor can I resist attempting a word picture of the startling golden hollies. The golden rays of sunlight impart the coloration of these ethereal hollies.
But the sun, like the proverbial Indian giver, merely lends her gold, which must be repaid whenever the leaves fail to obey the sun god.
Thus, as the leaves become old and shaded within the tree’s body, they first become mottled with green, then gradually fade to a pale green, forever losing their borrowed riches.
On clear moonlight nights, the golden hollies serve as phantasmal beacons, illuminating the landscape with the pale yellow glow of reflected moonbeams.
Tall, symmetrically conical, and with vigorous growth, these sensational gold-plated fantasies of nature seem designed to grace the Gardens of the Gods.
Vegetative Reproduction and Propagation
By intent observation of the growth behavior of our hollies, we are always making exciting “finds,” and with knowledge of vegetative reproduction, we can capture these discoveries and “bring them home alive.”
Since these horticultural or garden varieties cannot be reproduced true to form from seed, we must resort to a multiplication process of propagation fully as mysterious as alchemy itself.
Thus, we are happily able to expand each of our wild mutants into a thousand replicas to share with others who seek the beautiful and unusual among the hollies.
As a result of nature’s generous contribution in providing hollies of almost every imaginable form and coloration of leaf and berry, the garden lover will find a holly suited to nearly every landscaping need.
Nor should one ever hesitate to utilize the hollies, for they yield most obediently to every wish or whim of their proud possessors.
Completely responsive to loving care, the hollies become more beautiful with the passing of the years. Nor do they ever appear to grow weary, and many a recorded holy patriarch is well past the century mark in age.
Hardiness and Cold Climate Concerns
The hardiness of the hollies is of special concern to all who live in colder climes. Fortunately, the English hollies, pots grown in perfectly composted soil and shipped without disturbance or impairment of their sturdy root systems, are proving to be far harder in withstanding the rigors of winter and the heat of midsummer than has been generally recognized in years past.
The present widespread, and may I add successful, planting of English hollies throughout the United States is due to a fortuitous combination of factors.
These are the more recent introduction of known resistant and named varietal selections, improved nursery techniques resulting in better-grown planting stock, increased knowledge of cultural requirements on the part of the garden enthusiasts, and finally, a general warming up or a trend toward higher mean temperatures over the North American continent.
Winter Care and Maintenance
Reports received from holly tree growers residing in nearly every state, coupled with our own experience of a lifetime among our Oregon hollies, and in a variable climate with temperature extremes of 15° degrees Fahrenheit below zero to 108° degrees Fahrenheit above, all add up to the following conclusions.
In general, the green leaves are harder than the variegated forms when exposed to sub-zero weather.
The most sensitive year is the first year when the hollies are freshly planted and have not struck their roots firmly into the soil of their new home sites.
Hollies readily become acclimated to changes in the environment, the somewhat more mature four-to-six-year trees making perhaps the most rapid adjustment in outdoor plantings.
Hollies are safe from damage by freezing in the late months of winter, by which time they have achieved a semi-dormant state.
The most critical season is when early December freezes catch them unprepared for winter, and they are still making new growth, perhaps with the too-zealous aid of their doting owners.
Most winter damage results from dehydration of the holly plant due to the freezing of the soil about the surface feeder roots, which prevents needed moisture from reaching the cell living tissues.
This danger can be minimized by extra heavy mulching in November to prevent the frost level from penetrating deep into the earth.
A second common cause of winter die-back is the freezing of the moisture in the plant itself. Only in the very coldest of states is this threat encountered.
Then, it is usually overcome by wrapping the trees with burlap or straw or by encircling the holly with netting lined with burlap and filled in with dry leaves.
Joy and Importance of Planting Hollies
When you plant a holly, or any tree for that matter, you are expressing most tangibly your faith in nature.
Furthermore, you are engaging in an enterprise dedicated to the future happiness and welfare of others.
For it is truly spoken that “He who plants trees loves others besides himself.” As your holly, pointing to the sun grows heavenward, yours will be the joy of accomplishment.
44659 by Ambrose Brownell