JUNE 165 



weeks ago some of these were hoary with innumerable 

 small white blossoms. It will be interesting to note 

 whether these are followed by an unusually heavy crop 

 of berries, 1 or whether, like other fruits, they have been 

 destroyed by the unseasonable cold of early June. Of 

 course, as most people know, the holly is a dioecious 

 plant, bearing flowers of different sexes on separate 

 trees, and that it is only on trees of the feminine 

 gender that the berries appear. As in the case of the 

 aucuba, one male plant suffices to fertilise the ovaries 

 of a number of females planted near it, the pollen being 

 wind- wafted from one to the others; but, unlike the 

 aucuba, there is no means of distinguishing the sex of 

 the holly before the flowers appear ; planting, therefore, 

 has to be done at haphazard. The female aucuba was 

 known in this country in the variegated form for a 

 century before the male was imported; many people 

 will remember the agreeable surprise which was the 

 result of introducing the latter. The male plants bear 

 plentiful racemes of pollen-bearing flowers. It is only 

 necessary to plant a diminutive male in the vicinity of 

 a group of hitherto uninteresting females to induce 

 these to produce an abundant crop of scarlet berries as 

 large as small olives. The case was just the reverse 

 with the well-known garden shrub Garrya elliptica. 

 In this the male is the more ornamental, from its 

 profusion of tassel-like catkins. It has been long culti- 

 vated in this country, but the female is an introduction 

 of recent years, and I have never met her. 



1 They were not. The crop of berries was not more than average. 



