Deck the halls with boughs of
holly
It must be Christmas, the holly is in berry. Or it should be
Christmas in this out of sync
hemisphere, where we're cheated out of the European traditions
that accompany mid winter which are meant to restore the sun at
it's lowest and shortest days and kick start the
new growing year. (At the moment I'll settle for some rain.)
Holly,
Ilex aquifolium
or the American variety Ilex opaca (there
are a number of varieties even deciduous ones) prefers a mild
climate and doesn't like extended frost. Along with the mistletoe
that has yellow berries in midwinter, it's ability to add a touch
of cheery colour to a season without much of that, has given it a place in
folklore. Our bush is about my height, six foot (that's er
1.something metres), and was
'uncovered' when we moved the front gate (it is beside the Spindle
berry tree I wrote
about here). It is the first
time I've noticed the holly with berries so it's probably a young tree
planted just before we moved here eight years ago. The leaves are so
glossy green and the berries
so improbably red, it prompted this diary entry.
I'd read a lot about the symbolism of the holly, but I looked it up
again in my old two volume Margaret Grieve's Modern Herbal
(of course it's available in full online, and you should read her
holly entry
here for its medicinal and folklore details). I then searched the web, but it seems that Mrs.
Grieve has cornered the holly information and everyone else just
quotes or steals from her entry.
In Europe and UK the tree is a common hedgerow plant, growing
strongly and with spiky leaves that keep animals in or out. It was
often planted along with plantations of oak to protect the small
trees from animals. The upper leaves are often less spiked and can
be cut and fed to animals as a stock feed in winter, so it's more the
density of those close plantings that make it work as a fence.
Trees are either male or female, only the female trees have
berries and some varieties never develop the classic Christmas
card Holly spikes. There's one variety that is called hedgehog
holly which has spines on the surface as well. I'll just have to
wait and see what ours grows like.
The holly's leaves are thick and 'leathery' with a waxy surface to
slow down water loss through transpiration. This makes even the
green leaves burn (try it!), and in forest fires the trees apparently burn
like torches. This is why the leaves last as a decoration. When
they eventually fall from the tree they stay green on the ground
for a long time.
The wood also holds little water compared to its weight,
so it is a good firewood and even burns when it's green. The pale
timber, almost white, is dense but can be carved or turned easily,
and is used as an inlay wood, and used to be made into whip
handles, walking sticks, piano keys, scientific instruments and
shuttles for weaving. It's still favoured for billiard cue inlays.
The trunk of the bigger trees is a greyish smooth bark with slight
indentations and fine 'scribbly writing' cracks in it. Apparently the thin
bark can get sunburned and I was intrigued to find that it once was
stripped, pounded and allowed to ferment to make a sticky
substance called birdlime. Now birdlime is different from
bird lime, bird droppings and mistletoe is also called birdlime.
Birdlime (actually bird-glue) was favoured by poachers who used to
mix it with fat, goose-fat was favoured, and spread it on branches
to trap birds who would stick to it.
The English Lake District had so much holly that they used to make
birdlime for export to Asia where apparently it was used to catch insects.
(I wonder if that's what was used on the old fly-strips, those
yellowy rolls of curled paper hanging in toilets and kitchens that I remember from my country
childhood.)
One entry I found added some interesting information related to
pubs and drinking (and the difference between Irish superstitions
and English).
It is said to be unlucky to cut down a
holly. The tree is one of the ancient symbols of the midwinter
festival. In Ireland it is an abode of the fairies and thus should
not be grown near a house; in England it was planted near houses
to ward off witches and lightning. Vendors of alcohol would often
set up their stalls under a holly tree at fairs and markets, and
this may be reflected in pub names such as The Hollybush or The
Bush.
Greg Moffat, Biodiversity.org (has a good overview of Holly
taxonomy etc.)
We're going to have to wait for it to grow a bit to drink under
our holly, but I like the idea. Oh, and if you didn't read
Margaret Grieve don't eat the berries. They're poisonous to
humans even though the birds seem to like them. Merry
Christmas.
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The The Latin derivation of Ilex comes
apparently from the latin name for the Holm oak Quercus
ilex whose young leaves have the same kind of
indentations and spines.
Folklore and
Magical use
"Also that its flowers cause water to freeze and that its
wood when thrown at an animal, even without touching it, had
the property of compelling the animal to return and lie down
beside it."
I'll try the flowers bit when they next appear and tell you
about the result. Currently the pond in the backyard is
frozen anyway with minus 5° mornings. The
holly stick throwing was apparently handy if you're rounding up the cows, or being attacked by a
wild animal.
How to make holly Birdlime/glue
"From the bark, stripped from the young shoots and suffered
to ferment, birdlime is made. The bark is stripped off about
midsummer and steeped in clean water; then boiled till it
separates into layers, when the inner green portion is laid
up in small heaps till fermentation ensues. After about a
fortnight has elapsed, it becomes converted into a sticky,
mucilaginous substance, and is pounded into a paste, washed
and laid by again to ferment. It is then mixed with some
oily matter, goosefat being preferred, and is ready for use."
M.Grieve.
Letter from Niccolo Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori
10
December 1513
"I am living on my farm, and since I had my last bad luck, I
have not spent twenty days, putting them all together, in
Florence. I have until now been snaring thrushes with my own
hands. I got up before day, prepared birdlime, went out with
a bundle of cages on my back, so that I looked like Geta
when he was returning from the harbor with Amphitryon's
books. I caught at least two thrushes and at most six. And
so I did all September. Then this pastime, pitiful and
strange as it is, gave out, to my displeasure. And of what
sort my life is, I shall tell you."
(If like me you wondered about that Amphitryon/Geta
reference it appears that Machiavelli is referring to an
ancient Roman comedy by a playwright called Plautus.)
"Plautus made the Romans laugh. This
highly successful playwright transformed the mild-mannered
Greek New Comedy written more than a century earlier into a
more playful and ribald style. Unlike Terence, whose plays
were thoroughly Hellenic, Plautus introduces into his
borrowings Roman characters, customs, and objects. Plautus
is the earliest Latin author of whom we have more than
fragments; twenty-one of his plays are extant."
Harvard Uni press
So there. (Marginalia rules ok!) |