British Native Trees
and Shrubs

Holly Ilex aquifolium (Aquifoliaceae)

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh, ho! The holly!
This is life most jolly.
Heigh, ho! Sing heigh, ho! Unto the green holly:

As You Like It Act II
William Shakespeare

 

The intensely dark-green, high-gloss leaves of holly with their undulating margins and sharp spines make this one of our most distinctive native evergreens. When grown in open position the tree can reach up to 23 m in height with a narrow, conical crown, but is more often around 10 m tall. The bark is smooth and steel-grey and the dense, oval to elliptic leaves are tough and leathery in texture, 5-12 cm long, with a shiny dark-green surface and paler underneath. Lower leaves, and those on younger trees, have wavy margins and stout prickles, but upper leaves and those on older trees can be smooth-edged with a pointed tip. In May and June, occasionally also in the autumn, the small, fragrant, waxy-white, four-petalled flowers appear in clusters in the leaf axils. Male and female flowers are carried on separate trees, although both sexes do sometimes occur on one tree, and at least one male has to be planted for every six females to ensure pollination. In good years female trees produce an abundance of beautiful scarlet berries, sometimes yellow or orange, which ripen in late autumn or early winter and often last until spring. Each contains up to four black seeds. Beware, the berries cause stomach upset if eaten.

Holly is found in woods, often as part of the understorey in oak and beech woods, in hedgerows and open scrub throughout most of lowland England on a wide range of soils, ascending to 500 m in West Yorkshire, but as a native it is absent from much of the East Midlands.

Native holly makes a very fine garden hedge, always green and shining and an effective barrier against cold winds, noise, pollution, stray animals and burglars. It can also be grown as a specimen tree or in a woodland garden, and is very tolerant of clipping and shaping. Holly accepts sun or shade and a wide range of soils from clays and peat to sands and chalk, although it grows largest in rich, sandy loam. It does not like waterlogged ground and is reasonably drought-proof. The prickly leaves take many years to rot down and when dried they can be can be scattered round the base of vulnerable shrubs to repel slugs. Propagation is probably best achieved by taking cuttings with a heel in late summer, planting in a shady cold frame, transplanting after a year and growing on for a further year or two before setting in a permanent site. Seeds take from 18 – 20 months to germinate and need stratifying before sowing in a nursery bed protected from birds and small rodents.

Holly wood is white, hard and compact, often used for turning, carving or decorative inlays.

As well as giving cover and shelter to small birds in all seasons, holly produces welcome berries for fieldfares and mistle thrushes in winter. The leaves, which are the favourite food of holly blue caterpillars, are also eaten by two tortricoid moths and are often attacked by a leaf-miner. The red berries remain fresh with a high moisture content and last on the tree for almost a year, being resistant to extreme cold. They are a valuable food source when deep snow makes ground feeding impossible and mistle thrushes defend bushes to keep a long-term food supply through winter. Holly berries are small enough to be swallowed whole by most of the fruit-eating birds and at least seven species have been recorded eating them, especially blackbirds, mistle thrushes, wood pigeons, collared doves, redwings, fieldfares and song thrushes, and robins and blackcaps are also consumers.

Page last updated - January 10, 2002  

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