Addisonia 71 



(Plate 116) 



ILEX VERTICILLATA 

 Winterberry 



Native of eastern United States 



Family Aquifouacea© HoIvI^y Family 



Prinos verticillatus L. Sp. PI. 330. 1753. 



Ilex verticillata A. Gray, Man. ed. 2. 264. 1856. 



An Openly branched shrub, not commonly over eight to ten 

 feet high but, it is said, exceptionally growing to the stature of a 

 small tree; the branching is alternate, the twigs dark brown 

 flecked with scattered white lenticels, their younger parts often 

 slightly pubescent. The dark green leaves are reticulate-veiny 

 and often rugose, and are thicker but less firm than in other nearly 

 related species; they are glabrous or somewhat pubescent on the 

 upper surface and more or less tomentulose-pubescent beneath, 

 especially along the prominent veins; their shape varies from 

 lance-oval or broader to oblong-lanceolate, with acute or caudate- 

 acuminate apex and narrowed or contracted base; the margins 

 are somewhat doubly and unevenly sub-uncinately serrate; the 

 blades are one and one half to three and one half inches long and 

 half as broad as long; the petioles usually bear some pubescence 

 and are one quarter to three quarters of an inch long. The flowers 

 are mainly dioecious and are crowded in diminutive axillary cymes 

 along the season's branches. The sterile flowers are in number one 

 to twelve and are borne on usually glabrous pedicels three sixteenths 

 of an inch or less in length, their peduncle usually shorter and 

 puberulent; the fertile flowers are one to three on commonly 

 puberulent pedicels shorter and less slender than those of the 

 sterile flowers, their peduncle almost obsolete; minute brown brac- 

 teoles are found at the base of the pedicels. The small calyx-lobes 

 are ovate to triangular-ovate or orbicular and are pubescent and 

 fringed. The white corolla is rotate, about one quarter of an inch 

 across, with four to six oblong blunt lobes spreading and somewhat 

 recurved at maturity. The drupes are scarlet and shining and are 

 globose, or slightly broader than long, becoming three eighths of an 

 inch in diameter; their pulp is yellow and incloses about six oblong, 

 three-angled, bony nutlets one quarter to three sixteenths of an 

 inch in length. 



Not in any way noteworthy in form or foliage and without dis- 

 tinction in its flowering, this shrub has little to mark it for partic- 

 ular attention until, in the autumn, its scarlet berry-like drupes 

 brighten in the low grounds and thickets that are its home. By 

 mid-September the berries, for, non-botanically, such are they 



