It is rather curious that, dearly as Shakespeare loved the woodland and ready as he ever was to enrich his verse with references to trees and flowers, he never mentions the holly except in this song from As You Like It. This is the more remarkable because holly is more widely distributed over Britain than most other forest growths, and must have been far more abundant in the sixteenth century before the land was infested by rabbits to the extent it is now; for these accursed rodents make a clean sweep of holly seedlings and also destroy large trees by barking them.

It may be thought that the holly should be ranked as a shrub rather than as a forest tree; but when well grown it is fairly entitled to the superior rank, for there are many fine specimens in these islands upwards of 50 feet high. Dr. Henry measured one in 1909 near Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, 60 feet high and ll½ feet in girth. But this tree has no single bole, for it divides into seven large stems at about 18 inches from the ground. A far more shapely specimen is one which Lord Kesteven measured at Doddington Hall, Lincoln, and found in 1907 to be about 50 feet high, with a girth of 9½ feet at breast height. Being very patient of shade, the holly is sometimes drawn up to still greater height than this; Mr. Elwes having found some at Russells, near Watford, crowded among beech trees and rising to 70 and 75 feet.

The most remarkable holly grove known to me is in the park of Gordon Castle, covering a steep bank overlooking what used to be the Bog o' Gicht, but now a fertile holm. It is not known whether these hollies are of natural growth or planted, but they are evidently of great age; indeed, they are mentioned as remarkable in a description of Gordon Castle written in 1760—154 years ago. There are about five hundred trees in the grove, irregularly scattered along the bank, fifty-four of them being crowded into the space of about a quarter of an acre. But alas! one may look in vain for seedlings which might ensure the perpetuation of this ancient grove; all that may spring up are greedily devoured by rabbits.

Talking of seedlings, the propagation of hollies from seed requires to be set about in light of the fact that the seed requires a year of repose before germinating. The readiest way, therefore, is to lay the berries in moist sand for twelve months, after which the seeds may be sown in a nursery bed, where they will soon show signs of life.

The largest, though not the loftiest, holly I have ever seen is the remarkable tree at Fullarton House, near Ayr. It stands upon a shaven lawn, which is greatly to the detriment of its nourishment, and it has lost much of its height through decay of the upper branches. But it has a single hole of 8 feet, measuring at the narrowest part, 3 feet from the ground, 11 feet 3 inches in girth. The spread of branches is 189 feet in circumference.

Having been cultivated for centuries as a hedge and shrubbery plant, the holly has sported into a great variety of forms and colours, none of them, to my taste, the match of the wild type for beauty, and some of them mere ugly caricatures thereof. The best variegated forms are of ancient descent—namely Golden Queen and Silver Queen, which are quite as vigorous and bear fruit as freely as the type. These are both very beautiful; as to the other varieties, the world would be no loser if they were all extirpated, unless the quaint little hedgehog holly, described by Parkinson in 1640, were retained as a curiosity. To this doom, however, I certainly would not consign the yellow-berried holly, which gives a fine contrast with the common scarlet-berried kind, and is stated by Cole (writing in 1657) to have been found in a wild state near Wardour Castle. John Evelyn wrote in 1664 of a variety with white berries; Loudon also referred to this, and also to one with black berries; but I have neither seen these varieties nor met with anyone who had. It is doubtful whether both writers have not been misled by hearsay.

Evelyn employed all the resources of typography to express his enthusiasm for this fine evergreen:—

"Above all the natural Greens which inrich our home-born store, there is non certainly to be compared to the Holly, insomuch as I have often wonder'd at our curiosity after foreign Plants and expensive difficulties, to the neglect of the culture of this vulgar but incomparable tree.... Is there under Heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impregnable Hedge of near three hundred foot in length, nine foot high, and five in diameter; which I can show in my poor Gardens at any time of the year, glitt'ring with its arm'd and vernish'd leaves? The taller Standards at orderly distances, blushing with their natural Coral. It mocks at the rudest assaults of the Weather, Beasts, or Hedge-breakers."

This hedge grew, not at Wotton, but at Sayes Court, Evelyn's other place near Deptford, which he leased to the Czar Peter the Great in 1697, and had occasion to repent having done so, for that eccentric monarch, in the intervals of his work at the dockyard, amused himself by causing his courtiers to trundle each other in wheelbarrows down a steep descent into the said hedge, which was seriously damaged thereby.

No tree is better adapted than the holly for making a hedge; but it does not always get the treatment necessary to produce the finest effect. I have never seen any to equal the holly hedges at Colinton House, in Mid-Lothian, which were planted between 1670 and 1680, and are now from 35 to 40 feet high, tapering upwards from a basal diameter of about 20 feet. The lower branches have rooted themselves freely, so that it would be difficult to create a more effective barrier of vegetation. The total length of these hedges is 1,120 feet, having been formed originally with about 4,500 plants. Colonel Trotter's gardener, Mr. John Bruce, takes a just pride in tending them, clipping them annually at the end of March, so as to ensure a close young growth maturing before the winter frosts.

The proper season for planting hollies is May, after growth has started. If the operation is delayed till autumn, they make no new roots, and suffer so much from frost and cold winds that many of them never get established. This is one of those secrets which one has to find out for oneself, at the cost of many wasted seasons. Haud ignarus loquor. Although in generous soil the holly will make long annual shoots, it is very slow in forming wood, which may account for our neglect of it as a timber tree. But the wood is of very fine quality, being hard and white, excellent for turnery and for making mathematical instruments.

"We presume," says Phillips in Sylva Florifera (1823), "that many noble trees of holly would be seen in this country, but for the practice of cutting all the finest young plants to make coachmen's whips, thus leaving only the crooked branches or suckers to form shrubs." The demand for this purpose must have diminished with the spread of automobilism; but the ravages wrought on holly trees for Christmas decoration are deplorable, raiders finding a ready sale for their plunder in all the big towns. It is a gentle custom to "weave the holly round the Christmas hearth"; but it is desirable that the weavers should observe some distinction between meum and tuum—pronouns which they seem to regard as synonymous when applied to holly.

Pliny repeats, without comment, the statement by Pythagoras that the flowers of holly turn water into ice, and, further, that if a man throws a staff of holly at a beast, and misses it, the staff will return to his hand. Here we seem to have a report of the use of the boomerang; but Parkinson, writing in the seventeenth century, expresses lofty disdain for such fables. "This," says he, "I here relate that you may understand the fond and vain conceit of those times, which I would to God we were not in these days tainted withal." The Scottish clans of Drummond and Maxwell of old bore the holly as their badge.

In Lowland Scots the word "hollen" preserves the original English form, which in Ancren Riwle (about 1230) is written "holin," being direct from the Anglo-Saxon "holen, holegn." Chaucer writes it "holm," a form which occurs in such place-names as Holmwood and Holmesdale in Surrey. It is also preserved in the name holm-oak, i.e. the ilex or evergreen oak, whereof the young leaves bear holly-like spines. It is an interesting feature in both these trees, as well as in the holly-leaved Osmanthus, that the leaves produced above the level of browsing animals are spineless, such defence being needless for the upper branches. This characteristic has been called in question by persons founding their observation upon cultivated varieties of the holly, some of which bear none but spineless leaves, others none but spined ones. It will, however, be found to be the normal habit in wild hollies.

It is a hazardous thing for a Saisneach to dabble in Celtic etymology, yet will I venture to mention that the Gaelic for holly is cuileann, and may be recognised in such place-names as Cullen in Banffshire and Lanarkshire and (aspirated) Barhullion in Wigtownshire. Far seen Slieve Gullion, a cone of the Mountains of Mourne, in Armagh (1,893 feet), is popularly connected with the name of Cuileann, a worker in metals in the reign of Conchobar Mac-Nessa, King of Ulster; but it is written Sliebhe Cuilinn in the Irish Annals, which indicates Holly Mountain as the true meaning. From the same source we are able to interpret Cullen, Cullion, and Cullenach, the names of many Irish townlands, as derived from vanished hollies; and Cuileanntrach Castle, in Meath, destroyed by one Rory in 1155, was so called because of the hollies on the shore.