582 EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 
evergreen, and grows in moist cool soils from thirty to eighty feet 
in height. At the north it can only be grown as a tub-shrub to be 
wintered under glass. The leaves are similar to those of the 
rhododendron family. Flowers single, white, four inches in diame- 
ter, and fragrant. 
The Pubescent Gordonia, G. pubes cens, is a smaller deciduous 
species, becoming a tree from thirty to fifty feet high in the Gulf 
States, and diminishing to a shrub farther north. A little more 
hardy than the preceding, but unsuited to open-ground planting 
north of the Carolinas. Its large white flowers appear from May 
to August, and are exceedingly fragrant. It does best in a cool 
moist soil and sheltered situation. 
THE HOLLY. Ilex. 
The hollies are mostly evergreens, and embrace species of all 
sizes from small shrubs to large trees ; and are natives of both 
continents. They grow slowly and live long. The name holly is 
supposed to be a corruption of holy, and the branches are always 
used in England to decorate dwellings and churches during the 
holydays of Christmas. The species thrive better than most trees 
in the shade and smoke of cities. 
The European Holly. Ilex aquifoliiDn. — In the British 
islands this holly forms a very compact conical tree twenty to thirty 
feet high. Its leaves are glossy, deeply scolloped, and armed with 
many sharp points or spines. It bears clipping well, forms the 
most impenetrable of hedges in the moist mild climate of England, 
and is more free from the attacks of insects than other hedge trees ; 
but it endures neither the winters or summers of our middle and 
northern States. South of Washington, in shady situations, it 
sometimes develops its beauty. The varieties of this holly are very 
numerous, and vary much from each other ; and it is observed of 
the variegated-leaved sorts that they are quite as healthy in their 
appearance as the normal form. The most marked varieties are 
the smooth-edge-leaved, I. a. marginaiiwi, having pointed-oval 
leaves with smooth edges, without prickles, thick and leathery ; the 
