Plant of the Month December 2019: American Holly
Mature American Holly. Photo by Betsy Washington.
Detail of American Holly foliage and fruit. Photo by Betsy Washington
The American Holly, Ilex opaca, is one our few broad-leaf evergreen trees in the Northern Neck and is a fabulous landscape plant for our gardens. They have long been a symbol of renewal and life during the depths of winter. Hollies light up the gray and brown winter landscape of our coastal woodlands with their lustrous green leaves that catch the winter light, and scarlet berries. Old hollies in the wild can reach up to 50’ or more in height with a trunk diameter of up to 1.5’, but in our gardens they rarely reach 30’ because of their slow growth. American hollies make handsome specimens with their densely pyramidal shape, spine-tipped, evergreen foliage, and smooth gray bark.
Like most members of the holly family, American hollies are dioecious, meaning individual trees are either female or male. Females bear the showy fruit that often persists into late winter or early spring, unless eaten by hordes of hungry robins or cedar waxwings. Birds tend to leave the astringent-tasting fruit until other food is in short supply, making hollies an important late-winter food source. Repeated freezing and thawing of the berries are reputed to sweeten and ferment them, causing more than a few stories of apparently tipsy robins. The fruit is also eaten by turkeys, quail, other songbirds and small mammals.
Hollies bloom in May and attract scores of pollinating bees and hoverflies to their small greenish-white flowers with their light honey fragrance. Unless you live near coastal woodlands with plenty of nearby hollies, you will need to plant a male nearby to insure copious fruit.
American hollies are a dominant understory tree in our sandy coastal soils in upland forests as well as well drained floodplain forests and swamp hummocks. Hollies are adaptable trees and best planted at smaller sizes; they are shade tolerant, somewhat salt tolerant, and very tolerant of deer browse, making them a valuable addition our gardens. They prefer acidic soils and some shade in the heat of the afternoon but thrive even in deep shade although fruit set and branching will be less dense. They make excellent pyramidal specimen plants, wonderful hedges or screens, and can be pruned into formal hedges. Their evergreen foliage makes a handsome backdrop for some of our lovely flowering understory trees such as the dogwoods and serviceberries that often occur with them in the wild.
Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County has magnificent old specimens that bedazzled us on the recent Christmas Bird Count, with their beauty and the joyful flocks of robins and cedar waxwings feeding on their abundant berries! Invite this beautiful evergreen tree into your landscape and enjoy armloads of colorful greens bedecked with scarlet berries to brighten your garden and home during the short days of winter. You will surely enjoy the flocks of songbirds that will be attracted to your landscape.
By Betsy Washington, Northern Neck Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society