Fall color - Winterberry

Winterberry is a great landscape shrub for fall and winter color.  It's almost native to the upper midwest, but not quite, but it has no trouble growing here at all. It's actually a holly, a deciduous holly, Ilex verticillata. In particular the dwarf variety is a nicely compact, relatively slow growing shrub, rather unobtrusive until fall and then zowie! The bright red berries just light up the area, and eventually they will become bird fodder. They look particularly good in front of evergreens or other shrubs.  One small thing to note. Hollies are dioecious, so trees either bear fruiting flowers or pollen flowers not both, however you only need one male for every few females. For some reason the males are not as tough nor as hardy as the females and they tend to die a bit more frequently, but they can be pretty easily replaced. As one friend put it, the berries are so lovely they could be artificial. Not sure but TPP thinks that was a complement.

Holly or Oak?

When you're in a new place you make some snap identifications, and sometimes they're right and sometimes they are wrong. This one was tricky because the first plant TPP saw was just a shrub. My initial guess was a holly; it just had the look of an evergreen shrub and the leaf was quite holly like, although some time ago TPP got quite a surprise when entering "holly" into the google search engine.  However a day later, there was the same leaf, but now it was on a tree that had a most decidedly oak look to it, and sure enough, there were little acorns forming. Little acorns, there can be little doubt of what you've got. Turns out this "resemblance" has been recognized for some time, so this tree is another iconic species of this Tuscan area, Quercus ilex, the holly oak, not the oak holly. It is an evergreen, a sort of local Tuscan live oak. You don't see a generic name (Ilex - holly) used as a specific epithet very often, but the International code of botanical nomenclature does say this is "legal".

Where did June go?

Next week is the 4th of July?  What?  Where did June go?  Dang, guess we've been busy because June just evaporated. Several signs suggest everything but us are on schedule. Had some black raspberries for breakfast; they aren't cultivated, just "tended" in the wildish black raspberry preserve at the rear of our property. Had 2/3s of a garden tomato, the 1st, and it was wonderful, but some tomato-loving critter ate a big chunk out of it. Typical. Having a wildlife friendly yard isn't all its cracked up to be at times. Zucchini, beans, peppers, eggplant are on the way. Usually by mid-June our gardens are in good shape and then the lilies, all sorts, break into flower for the mid-summer. This year there's still a lot of our yearly cleanup to do, and then all the gardens that we usually don't have to do anything to.  Where did all the weeds come from? The Phactors are still planting new things mostly to repair the winter's damage. So work is longer term. Some American hollies had been demonstrating for several years that hollies don't like growing in the upper Midwest; this winter truly convinced them.  TPP bit the bullet and removed them, well, what was left of them today. You know you've done the right thing when the space left looks better than it did with the hollies in place. Four of them were females, and birds loved the berries, especially cedar waxwings, but the male tree totally died so even if the others were growing well, their best feature, the red berries, were going to be absent.  A relocation of a mock orange and a new oak leafed hydrangea should help fix things up.  A ever larger Magnolia salicifolia is encroaching on this garden from the other side of a fence, so not so much space to fill. All this cutting and pulling is real work and TPP has had enough of it for today. Time to cool down, clean up, and blog.  Off to a cocktail party at 5. Later to Hyde Park.

Seasonal Holiday Blogging - Phlox News' Phony Outrage

Oh no, some grinchy, scroogey school district is prohibiting kids from wearing Christmas colors, our favorite seasonal red/green motif (Wait until that Canadian guy with all the duct tape finds out!). When Phlox News posts a news article about the War on Christmas it pretty much assures you that it will be borderline hysterical, and not in the ha-ha funny way, although they can be funny in sort of a pathetic way, at least to us educational elites. Now of course all reputable news organizations check their facts, so of course you know Phlox News did not find out their story was completely false until after they posted it, but this is not really about Phlox News because frankly they are not very interesting. What the Phytophactor finds interesting is the idea that red and green are Christmas colors when actually they are pagan through and through, long associated with a Druidic celebration of the winter solstice. What would really cheer up the season, and send Phlox News into a hissy fit, would be little Balder (reference to some almost appropriate Norse mythology) arriving at school dressed in sweater emblazoned with a falalalala deck the halls green and red holly motif (a seasonal blogging theme that has already taken some surprising turns) and after being told he should not be wearing Christmas colors to school he says, “Christmas? I’m a Druid celebrating the arrival of the winter solstice”, so Balder alone gets to keep his sweater right side out and everybody else has to turn their Christmas sweaters inside out. Happy HOLIDAYS Phlox News.

Silly botanist; holly is a girl

Long has the Phactor thought that plant-oriented people make up a very small portion of the general population, a very small club if you will, and then along comes something so simple, so direct, quite forcefully reinforcing that idea. While thinking about a yuletide post on pagan botanical customs (a forthcoming feature), the Phactor with clearly botanical expectations and still not quite thinking clearly because of a low caffeine titer and clogged sinuses, googled "holly" with an expectation of seeing numerous images of Ilex. If google represents what the general public thinks then when you say here's an image of holly, only 1 out of every 50 people will think of the plant. The other 49 are thinking about mostly blondes, mostly scantly clad blondes, mostly enhanced and artificially colored blondes, and quite definitely, mostly A blonde that lived with a geriatric publisher as a caretaker of sorts. And this result was actually puzzling upon first glance, sort of a what the heck just happened momentary confusion before the duh! awakening, which only shows how little impact pop culture has made upon this botanical academic, although still being somewhat ashamed of actually knowing upon reflection who this particular Holly was. This generated an interesting reflection upon the symbolism of decorating you home with Holly, or Hollies, and then my thoughts returned to the geriatric publisher with more than a bit of revulsion and a recommendation about people who won't act their age invariably looking foolish. Thank goodness when you google "holly bush" the result is botanical, not blonde.

Fall Color - Winterberry

Most fall color comes from foliage, but a few plants produce colorful displays of fruit. Sometime back the Phactor featured the azure beauty berry, a terrific shade-loving, low care shrub. Another shrub that does well in the difficult continental climate of Lincolnland is winterberry, a deciduous holly (Ilex verticilliata), and since it drops its leaves, the display of bright scarlet fruits is all the more dramatic. Like all hollies, winter berry is also dioecious (di – two, oecious–housed), so you have to plant one pollen producer for every several female shrubs if you want fruit. And of course, the birds love such fruits, so expect your attractive display to disappear by way of helping them along on their migrations.