HOLLY 



Ilex monti'cola, the Mountain Holly, is another species that 

 becomes a tree, but is not very generally known. It is 

 found in the Catskill Mountains and 

 extends southward along the Alle- 

 ghanies as far as Alabama. The 

 leaves do not at all suggest the pop- 

 ular idea of a holl)', as they are de- 

 ciduous, light green, ovate or ob- 

 long, wedge-shaped or rounded at 

 base, serrate, acute at apex, and ut- 

 terly destitute of spines or bristles. 

 They vary from two to six inches in 

 length. The white flowers appear in 

 June when the leaves are more than 

 half grown. The fruit is spherical, 

 nearly half an inch in diameter and 

 bright scarlet. It is a tree of re- Mountain Hoiiy, iiex monticoia. 



, T_ , , , . Leaves 2' to 6' lone-. 



markably slow growth ; a specimen 



in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, is 

 five inches in diameter and shows one hundred and seven 

 layers of annual growth, of which seventy-nine are sapwood. 



The genus Ilex is widely distributed over the world. It 

 has no representative west of the Rocky Mountains, nor 

 any in Australia. But South America is rich in them, the 

 West Indies alone have ten species, eastern North America 

 has fourteen, India twenty-four, China and Japan over 

 thirty. Europe, strange to say, has only one, but that one 

 has been developed into innumerable varieties. One hun- 

 dred and seventy-five species have already been noted, and 

 undoubtedly there are others not yet described. 



The fossil remains which are now known give confirmation 

 of the fact that plants are ever changing. The species of to- 

 day are rarely the species of a former age. The rocks tell 

 us that in the early tertiary period several forms of Ilex ex- 

 isted in the arctic regions. 



Ilex spinescens, a fossil form, is believed to be the remote com- 

 mon ancestor of the American and European Christmas Hollies. 



45 



