Product Description

With fruit colored orange, yellow, black, and white in addition to the familiar red, sometimes lasting six months or more, hollies are ideal ornamentals. Hollies represents years of research by one of the giants of American horticulture, covering all the hollies in cultivation with descriptions of many of the 30 deciduous and 780 evergreen species, including upright trees of 60 feet to creeping prostrate forms.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1053781 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 619 pages

From Booklist
If given the exciting task of designing a new landscape--whether a small space garden or vast acreage--it is likely the majority of gardeners will consider including hollies. Galle's guide to the genus Ilex presents a delightfully balanced yet comprehensive study of these remarkably varied plants. After a bit of legend and lore by a founder of the Holly Society of America, informative chapters reveal myriad ways to use hollies in the garden, for topiaries, and as bonsai. In addition to providing extensive botanical background, an expansive section describes hundreds of species in a definitive format, with the book's final section devoted to recommendations for culture and propagation. Galle provides home gardeners with the advice necessary to select plants of appropriate size, hardiness, and cultural requirements. Illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings. Alice Joyce

Review
"A wealth of information for avid amateurs, students, educators, and other professional horticulturists." Choice, March 1998

"Fred Galle has struck a fine balance between the academic and applied portions of the text."—Pacific Horticulture, Spring 1999

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Hollies have many fine qualities that make them an important group of both evergreen and deciduous plants in landscapes today. With proper selection they can become the main feature throughout the garden. They are versatile plants that can be used in a wide range of situations; dwarf hollies are suitable for bonsai, rock gardens, and facing taller shrubs; medium hollies are useful as foundation plants; and tall hollies make excellent screens, hedges, and wind breakers. However they are used, the year-round landscape appeal of hollies stems from their habit of growth, pleasing foliage, and ornamental berries.
It is important to know the size and shape of the numerous hollies. A wide range of plant forms is available, including shrubs of low density with cushionlike habit, larger shrubs with spreading and rounded habit, and upright pyramidal trees to 40 ft. or more high with loose to dense habit. Hollies come in every shape except as vines. Many are evergreen, but a few are deciduous and provide interesting contrast in the winter landscape.
Holly leaves are important features also and vary in color and texture. Most selected cultivars have bright dark olive-green foliage, but dull dark green to glossy green to grayish and variegated forms exist. Plants with variegated foliage can be used for contrast or to call attention to an area ... The spiny-leaved hollies are attractive in any season but are especially favored during Yuletide. Many excellent hollies have leaves without spines or leaves with only fine-serrated margins. Leaf texture varies from medium to coarse, and leaf size varies from small to large.
With proper selection, hollies provide colorful fruit for at least three to six months of the year and often longer.
Ilex crenata
(Japanese holly) with its many cultivars and
I. glabra
(inkberry) have black fruit while most of the other species have red fruit. Selected cultivars have yellow or orange fruit. The red fruit of
I. aquifolium
(English holly) and
I. cornuta
(Chinese holly) often persists (unless eaten by birds) into the late spring or late summer side-by-side the new developing green berries. Plants with attractive yellow berries are usually ignored by birds until all red-fruited plants have been stripped of their fruit. Yellow-fruited plants also are more showy on cloudy days than are their red counterparts ...

My Favorite Plants.
As a dedicated plantsman I enjoy all plants. When, therefore, I am asked to name my favorite plant, my reply is that it is the plant at which I am looking at the time. It could be an azalea just coming into flower or a holly with its attractive glossy foliage. Nonetheless, there are three hollies that I always enjoy.
Ilex latifolia
(lusterleaf holly) has large spiny, glossy leaves. Although it is too large for most gardens, it makes a handsome specimen in a large garden, and its large clusters of fragrant yellow flowers draw attention to the plant in the spring.
Ilex pedunculosa
(long-stalked holly) has wavy, glossy, entire leaves, which are a good background for the long pendulous peduncles bearing red fruits like small cherries.
Ilex vomitoria
(yaupon holly) has many uses in the landscape from the low compact 'Dwarf Yaupon' to the pendulous 'Folsom Weeping', the latter available in both male and female forms. It has both red-fruited cultivars (e.g., 'Grays Greenleaf') and yellow-fruited cultivars (e.g., 'Saratoga Gold', 'Wiggins Yellow'). Yaupon holly is excellent in a woodland garden, for large massed plantings, as a tall pruned hedge, or as a small multitrunked specimen tree.
I enjoy all the hollies in my collection and value them as low-maintenance plants. With careful attention to the species and cultivars suitable and adaptable for your area, any gardener can enjoy these versatile landscape plants.

Customer Reviews

Hollies : The Genus llex
A must read for the Genux llex lover! This work covers, in a beautifully detailed manner, all aspects of working with and growing Hollies. A wonderful reference that will be read again and again.