THE HOLLY— continued. 
the bright berries lasting through winter, gives the tree its individual charm. After 
his tenant, Peter the Great, had amused himself by trundling a wheelbarrow through 
the Holly hedge at Deptford, John Evelyn writes in his “ Sylva ” (1662) : — 
“Is there under the heavens any more glorious and refreshing object than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred 
feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which I can still show at any time of the year in my ruined garden at 
Sayes Court (thanks to the Czar of Muscovy), glittering with its armed and vernished leaves blushing with their natural 
corale ? It mocks the rudest assaults of the weather, beasts, and hedge breakers.'* 
The name Holly probably referred originally to the spinous leaves, being 
connected with the root hul- or cul-, as in the Latin culmen, a peak ; while what is now 
its specific name, Aquifolium, means “ needle-leaved.” William Turner, in his 
“ Libellus de re Herbaria” (1538), says that the French call it housum, the English 
“ an holy tre ” and “ an Hulvar tre,” adding that, when a boy, he had made bird- 
lime from its bark. The old French houlx is now houx; and hulver lingers in use in 
our eastern counties, though it is mostly under the form holm that the name enters 
into those of places, such as Holmesdale and Holmwood. It is easy to understand 
how the name was taken to mean “ holy ” ; and how the old pagan use of the 
evergreen boughs for winter house-decoration became transformed into a Christian 
symbolism, which sees in the blood-red berries and thorny leaves a foreshadowing of 
the Passion at the celebration of the Nativity. 
Southey’s poem has popularised the fact that the lower leaves are well armed, 
being so twisted as to present spines in every direction, 
“ But as they grow where nothing is to fear, 
Smooth and unarm’d the pointless leaves appear.” 
There remains, however, one point to the upper leaves, and the spines of the 
lower ones do not serve to protect them from deer. Lord Avebury suggests that 
the twisting, which produces an absence of flat surfaces, may, like the glossiness, 
be a protection against snow. 
The clusters of small, wax-like, white, or pink-tinged flowers, which are 
produced from May to October, are peculiarly attractive to bees. They have some 
easily accessible honey ; and, as the tree is almost dioecious, it is dependent upon 
these insect visits for its pollination. Perfect flowers do occur ; but large aborted 
stamens in the female blossoms are often mistaken for pollen-bearing ones. It has 
been alleged that staminate trees become female with age. 
The polished berries are, in rare cases, yellow, white, or black. Though eaten, 
with impunity but with no great eagerness, by birds, they are so powerfully emetic 
and purgative as to be regarded as poisonous to man. The leaves contain a bitter 
principle known as ilicin, and were formerly used medicinally in cases of fever and 
rheumatism. They are used as tea by the charcoal-burners in the Black Forest ; 
whilst those of the congeneric Ilex paraguayensis of South America are the yerba 
de male, or Paraguay tea, so popular on the eastern side of that continent. Its 
alkaloid is allied to, or identical with, that of Tea. 
