content of the plant itself. This danger is often met by wrapping the hollies with 
burlap and straw. Another successful scheme is to encircle the holly with poultry 
netting lined with burlap and filled to the top of the tree and higher with leaves. 
It is only in the coldest of states that measures such as these must be taken to 
protect the hollies. They are growing freely all along the Atlantic Coast states 
from Boston to Florida, west through the States of Indiana, Southern IlIlinois, 
Kentucky, Missouri, eastern Kansas, and south through Oklahoma and Texas. 
The western states of New Mexico, Arizona, parts of Utah, Colorado and Idaho 
offer fine possibilities for growing the hollies, and they thrive all along the Pacific 
Coast from Southern California to British Columbia. 
In the colder states of Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Montana 
and Wyoming the hollies can best be enjoyed by keeping them growing in pots 
or in tubs and taken indoors for winter protection. Some of our customers are 
doing this and write that nothing gives them more pleasure than having a living 
holly to cheer them through the bleak winter months. 
For those who cautiously write asking if we can guarantee our hollies to live 
for them, we must sadly reply that too many factors govern one’s success with 
living plants and trees for us to make unwarranted promises. We can tell you that 
a green thumb will prove to be of great help, and two green thumbs will practically 
put you over the top with your hollies regardless of obstacles. 
“* Dioecitous’ 1s the word with Holhes 
So much confusion exists about the whole subject of whence cometh the holly 
berries that I’ve tried to give a good picture of the fundamentals on pages 36-37. 
But there is still more to the story, and first of all there’s another word descriptive 
of the hollies I'd like to introduce to you. It is dioecious which when freely trans- 
lated means that the sexes live in separate households. This is the reason why we 
must have two hollies, one of each sex, to assure production of berries which are 
really the seed pods by which the hollies reproduce themselves in the natural 
manner. 
Here are some facts to help you know your hollies better: Male and female 
hollies must be of the same species to be assured of berries. A male Opaca will not 
fertilize the blossoms of our English holly or vice versa. The male hollies bloom 
and produce pollen for fertilization but they do not themselves produce berries. 
Certain few hollies such as Ilex Cornuta and especially var. Burford will produce 
berries freely without benefit of male pollen. Such fruit is called parthenocarpic 
meaning sterile and cannot be germinated. Certain other hollies, especially the 
English green leafed varieties may produce a few sterile fruits, smaller than the 
fertile berries and slower to color, but never in profusion even though artificially 
induced by hormone treatment of the pistillate flowers. 
There is no such thing, all optimistic advertising to the contrary, as Bisex 
holly or Ilex Fertilis where male and female blooms are said to be so intermingled 
on the same branches as to be self pollinating and productive of fertile fruit. The 
only way to obtain a true bisexual holly is to implant by budding or grafting a male 
upon a female or vice versa. This procedure has not proven to be entirely satis- 
factory in nursery practice. 
If planting space is too limited to provide separate locations for two hollies, 
the male and female trees are best tied together and planted as one to insure a 
lifetime supply of berries. The male can then be kept from becoming dominant 
35 
