The Hollies 



tough, not strong. Buds short, pointed, brown. Leaves 2 to 4 

 inches long, oval, leathery, shiny, with wavy margin, veins 

 ending in sharp, stiff spines; persistent three years. Flowers 

 small, white, axillary in clusters, dioecious. Fruits bright red 

 (rarely yellow), dry berries, containing 4 bony nutlets, remaining 

 all winter. Preferred habitat, moist woodlands. Distribution, 

 southern Maine to Florida and throughout Gulf States; north into 

 Indiana and Missouri. Maximum size in Texas. Uses: Valuable 

 ornamental and hedge trees. Wood used as engravers' blocks, for 

 tool handles, whip stocks, walking sticks and for inlay work. 

 Branches for Christmas greens. 



It is rare to find a wood which so closely imitates ivory in 

 colour and texture as holly wood does. This makes it the delight 

 of the carver and decorator. Scroll work and turnery employ it. 

 Trunks of it form the rollers by which calicoes are printed. But 

 the Southern woods and barren fallow fields where the holly 

 grows are invaded every fall by collectors who cut the trees 

 down, strip them of their twigs, and leave the trunks to rot upon 

 the ground. These twigs go to Northern cities, and retail dealers 

 display in quantities, as wreaths and loose clusters, the evergreen 

 leaves, bright with scarlet berries. In the remotest village one 

 may now buy a sprig for his buttonhole to usher in the Christmas 

 holiday. The supply is still ample, but no means of renewing it is 

 being practised, and Nature will not be able to keep up much 

 longer with the increasing demand, and the wasteful methods 

 of gathering the annual harvest. It will not be long before the 

 engraver will have to buy holly wood, as he does the Eastern 

 boxwood, by the pound. The European holly and the American 

 are not essentially different in the quality and appearance of their 

 v/ood. 



The Dahoon (Ilex Cassine, Linn.) is a shrub or small tree 

 which grows on pine barrens and in low woods along the coast 

 from Virginia to Florida and west into Louisiana. Its evergreen 

 leaf is shiny above and twice as long as that of Ilex opaca, but it 

 has only occasionally a faint suggestion of teeth near the tip; 

 and it has no spines at all. The twigs and midribs of the leaves 

 are downy. The berries are dull red. A white-stemmed, narrow- 

 leaved variety, myrtifolia, is quite distinct from the type. 



The Yaupon (Ilex vomiioria. Ait.) is a shrubby tree of spread- 

 ing habit with very sm.all oval, evergreen leaves and many red 



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