Holly

Our native Holly has white flowers on separate male and female trees, opening from May.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Ilex aquifolium
Family: 
Hollies
Family Latin name: 
AQUIFOLIACEAE
Category: 
Flowering Plants
Vernacular names: 

Hulver, Holm, Hollin

Species description

Species description

Our native holly has white flowers on separate male and female trees, opening from May, the poisonous berries appearing only on the female trees of course.  The prickly, leathery, dark green leaves are borne only on the lower branches, where they deter browsers.  Holly is a slow-growing tree and its wood is hard, compact and even-grained, and much sought after for inlay work, as in Tunbridge ware, and by wood turners.  It was used for mathematical instruments, walking sticks, whip handles, engravers' blocks, shuttles for hand-weavers' looms, and for flail swingers.

Holly has masculine symbolism in folklore, just as ivy has feminine symbolism, hence their intertwinement in wreaths to symbolise togetherness.  People once thrashed themselves with holly in the belief that contagion would be driven out, a practice known as holming.  Holly leaves are diaphoretic (promote sweating), and an infusion once used to treat catarrh, pleurisy, and smallpox.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)

Details

Species family information

The one member of this family native to the UK is the familiar small tree we know as Holly.

Category information

Nucleic multicellular photosynthetic organisms lived in freshwater communities on land as long ago as a thousand million years, and their terrestrial descendants are known from the late Pre-Cambrian 850 million years ago. Embryophyte land plants are known from the mid Ordovician, and land plant structures such as roots and leaves are recognisable in mid Devonian fossils. Seeds seem to have evolved by the late Devonian. The Embryophytes are green land plants that form the bulk of the Earth’s vegetation. They have specialised reproductive organs and nurture the young embryo sporophyte. Most obtain their energy by photosynthesis, using sunlight to synthesise food from Carbon Dioxide and Water.

The earliest known plant group is the Archaeplastida, which were autotrophic. Listing just the surviving descendants, which evolved in turn, we have the Red Algae, the Chlorophyte Green Algae, the Charophyte Green Algae, and then the Embryophyta or land plants. The earliest embryophytes were the Liverworts, followed by the Hornworts, and the Mosses. Then we have the Vascular Plants, the Lycophytes and Ferns, followed by the Spermatophytes or seed plants, the Gnetophytes, Conifers, Ginkgos, and Cycads, and finally the Magnoliophyta (Angiosperms) or flowering plants.