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I L E X Aquifolium.
Common Holly.
41
T E TRANDRI A Tetragynia.
Gen. Char. Calyx with 4 or 5 teeth. Corolla wheel-
fhaped. Styles none. Berry with 4 feeds. Some
male flowers, which are four-cleft.
S pec. C har. Leaves ovate, acute, Ipinous.
Syn. Ilex Aquifolium. Linn. Sp. PI. 181. H u d f.^ 6 .
With. 210. Relh. 382. Sibth. 64.
Agrifolium. Ran Syn. 466.
I n ' woods, hedges and thickets not uncommon, flowering in
May, the berries ripening in autumn, and lafting through the
winter. There is a natural wood of holly half a mile from
Norwich in the way to Thorpe, the ground of which is an entire
mat of lily of the valley, mixed with hare-bells and wood
rufh.
The holly tree is of flow growth and long duration, its wood
confequently hard, and clofe-grained; the bark fmooth, grey,
abounding in mucilage, and hence by maceration in water it
makes bird-lime. Leaves alternate, on footftalks, elliptical,
pointed, waved, rigid, evergreen, Ihining, their margins (except
on very old branches) divided into fpinous lobes. In fome
cultivated varieties the upper furface is prickly, and the leaves
are very liable to be variegated with pale or deep yellow.
Flowers white, in axillary clufters, either 4 or 5-cleft; the
early ones generally impeded, and intermixed with fome that
have no germen, and thefe are always 4-cleft. Stamina fpread-
ing, alternate with the lobes of the corolla. Stigmas feffile,
Lerry fcarlet, rarely yellow, lafting long, and uninjured by our
fevereft froft.
The branches of this tree laden with berries, and mixed
with mifeltoe and the fpindle-tree, are ufed in many parts of
England to ornament churches and houfes at Chriftmas, and
hence the holly is in Norfolk vulgarly called Ghrijlmau