A Conversation about Winterberry and Family

By Jean Thomas

I’m fond of anything that provides spontaneous color in a brown and grey landscape. In my experience, red is most often the color that attracts my eye. Driving past swampy areas on our many country highways, there are two sources of a red visual jolt. One is the red-twigged Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera,) whose thickets and bands of dense brush come into their glory once everything has dropped their leaves. When there’s a dusting of snow, the stems of these shrubs are vividly red in the monochromatic landscape.

Another pop of color, usually in swamps or shady roadside locations, comes from the winterberry (Ilex verticillata). This is a charter member of the holly family, although it differs in several ways from what we expect of a “normal” holly bush. The landscape holly bushes are evergreen and leathery, spiny-leafed shrubs usually grown as hedge or specimen plants. These are native types (opaca) and Japanese (japonica) or English (aquifolium) types. While all hollies are dieoecious, meaning there must be at least one male plant for up to ten female plants in order to produce berries, not all are evergreen. There is an intermediate holly called the inkberry (Ilex glabra) that differs from the rest by having jet black berries and evergreen leaves without the distinctive spines of most landscape hollies. It is also happy with wet feet, like the Winterberry.

Our friend the Winterberry is a rebel on many levels. The leaves are deciduous, although in some years they can last a long time, and they have a Fall maroon color. The leaf color is not a reliable feature, though. It is the massive berry production that assaults the eye in years when the crop is heavy. The natives of all the hollies are subject to the variable whims of such things as access to water. The winterberry is a tough native shrub that can serve equally well as a woodland border or a rain garden staple. Non-purists can find many hybrids and cultivars for just about any of the holly species, each emphasizing a different characteristic of the original. So far, though, if you want the girls to produce berries, there must be at least one boy nearby (usually one male for up to ten females.) This is a plant that relies on the bees (and other insects) and pleases the birds when most other berries are all gone. Bluebirds and cedar waxwings are particular fans of this late winter treat. In fact, as many as forty five species of birds depend on the winterberry to help get through the cold. To learn specifically about the various hollies, look at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s information. They’re excellent.

And if you want to investigate rain gardens for next year’s excessive rain problems, take a look at the Ulster County CCE project: https://ulster.cce.cornell.edu/events/2015/04/28/rain-gardens-and-native-plants-presentation .

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