Part 6 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 80._ Male Flowers of Scots Pine.]

The Holly (_Ilex aquifolium_).

The Holly must be regarded as one of our small trees, although many specimens attain a height of forty or fifty feet, with a girth of ten or twelve feet. It is well distributed throughout our islands, ascending to a thousand feet, and it is probable that no other tree is so well known, by its foliage at least, as the Holly, or Holm, to give it its ancient name. The word Holm was incorporated by some of our ancestors far back in the name Holmsdale, which still attaches to the stretch of country at the southern foot of the chalk hills in Surrey, and whose proud motto is, ”Never wonne, ne never shall.” At the western end of the Holmsdale is Holmwood, and still a little further west Holmbury. In these places the Holly still grows bravely, not far from the old home of John Evelyn, who must be thought of whenever we talk of Hollies, though the recollection has to do with Sayes Court, his Thames-side house, where the barbarian Peter wrought such havoc with his cherished Holly-hedge. How Evelyn must have lamented that outrage is indicated in this extract from the ”Sylva”:--

”Is there under heaven a more glorious and refres.h.i.+ng object of the kind, than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which I can show in my now ruined gardens at Say's Court (thanks to the Czar of Moscovy) at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves? The taller standards at orderly distance, blus.h.i.+ng with their natural coral. It mocks the rudest a.s.saults of the weather, beasts, or hedge-breakers, _et illum nemo impune lacessit_.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 81._ Holly.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Holly.]

The bark of the Holly is smooth and pale-grey in colour. Time out of mind it has been used in the preparation of a viscid substance known as birdlime, which, spread on twigs, holds the feet of small birds.

Respecting the foliage of the Holly, there is little need to say anything, but for uniformity's sake we may note that the leaves are oval in shape, of a leathery consistence, with a firmer margin, running out into long sharp spines. It is a fact worthy of note that when the Holly has attained to a height of ten feet or so, it frequently clothes its upper branches in leaves that have no spines--a circ.u.mstance that Robert Southey sought to explain in his poem ”The Holly-tree,” on teleological grounds. His second verse, however, contains sufficient explanation of the fact it describes:--

”Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen; No grazing cattle through their p.r.i.c.kly round Can reach to wound; But, as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.”

In some places the young shoots are gathered by the peasants, dried, bruised, and used as a winter cattle-food. No doubt, in the early history of the Holly, cattle found out its good qualities for themselves, and browsed upon the then-unarmed foliage. In self-defence the tree developed spines upon its leaves, and so kept its enemies at a respectful distance. Above the reach of these marauders the production of spines would be a useless waste of material.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 82._ Flowers of Holly.]

The flowers of the Holly, though small, are conspicuous by their great number and white colour. They are about a quarter of an inch across, with four petals and four stamens or stigmas. Sometimes flowers with stamens are produced by the same tree that bears flowers with stigmas; but often the male and the female flowers are borne by separate trees, so that the possessor of a Holly that is solely male is sometimes puzzled by the fact that his tree, though covered with blossom, never produces a berry. The fruit is a.n.a.logous in structure to that of the Plum and Cherry, and is technically termed a _drupe_; but instead of the single stone of these fruits, in the Holly-berry there are four bony little stones, each with its contained seed. The berries ripen about September, and are then scarlet and glossy, though here and there one finds a tree whose fruit never gets beyond the yellow stage of coloration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 83._ Fruits of Holly.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 84._ Bole of Holly.]

Most parts of the tree have had their uses in medicine; the leaves, for example, being said to have value as a febrifuge, and the berries as a purgative, or in large doses (6 to 8) as an emetic. The smooth bark of large Hollies is often attacked by one of the most striking of our native lichens--_Graphis elegans_--whose black fruiting portions look like a raised cuneiform inscription. The Holly is not greatly subject to the attacks of insects, but many of its leaves will be found to have been tunnelled between the upper and lower skins by the larva of a minute moth, one of the Leaf-miners. It also provides the pabulum for the caterpillar of the Holly-blue b.u.t.terfly (_Lycaena argiolus_). The dead leaves may be examined for the minute p.r.i.c.kly Snail (_Helix aculeata_).

The wood of the Holly has an exceedingly fine grain, due to its slow growth, and it is very hard and white. These qualities make it valuable for many purposes, often as a subst.i.tute for Box-wood, and, when dyed black, in lieu of Ebony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 85._ Spindle--winter.]

The Spindle-tree (_Euonymus europaeus_).

The Spindle is right on the borderland between trees and shrubs, for though it will grow into a tree twenty feet high, yet our hedgerow specimens are usually bushlike, and only ten or twelve feet high. Until the autumn the Spindle, we fear, is rarely recognized as such, but gets confused with Buckthorn and Dogwood. In October, however, its quaint fruits have changed to a pale crimson hue, which renders them the most conspicuous feature of a hedgerow--even of one plentifully decorated with scarlet hips and haws and bryony-berries. The unusual tint of the Spindle, and the fact that it swings on a slender stalk, at once mark it out from the rigid-stalked hips and haws.

The trunk of the Spindle is clothed in smooth grey bark. The twigs, which are in pairs, starting from opposite sides of a branch, are four-angled. The s.h.i.+ning leaves vary from egg-shaped to lance-shaped, with finely-toothed edges. They are arranged in pairs, and in autumn they change to yellow and red. When bruised they give off a f[oe]tid odour, the juice is acrid, and said to be poisonous--a charge which is laid against the bark, flowers, and seed as well. The small greenish-white flowers are borne in loose cl.u.s.ters, of the type known as cymes, from the axils of the leaves, and appear in May and June. Some contain both stamens and pistil, but others are either stamenate _or_ pistillate. The calyx is cut into four or six parts, the petals and stamens agree with these parts in number, but the lobes of the stigma only range from three to five, corresponding with the cells of the ovary. The fruit is deeply lobed, and marked with grooves, indicating the lines of future division, when the lobes open and disclose the seeds, at first covered with their orange jackets, or _arils_, after the manner of the mace that encloses the nutmeg.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 86._ Flowers of Spindle.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pl. 87._ Fruits of Spindle-tree.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Spindle-tree. A, flowers.]

The hardness and toughness of Spindle-wood has long been esteemed in the fas.h.i.+oning of small wares where these qualities are essential, and the common name is a survival of the days when spinning was the occupation of every woman. Then spindles were in demand for winding the spun thread upon, and no wood was more suitable than that of Euonymus for making them. It shares with the Cornel (_Cornus sanguinea_) the name Dogwood; it is also Skewerwood, p.r.i.c.kwood, and Pegwood, all suggestive of uses to which it is or was applied. The young shoots make a very fine charcoal for artists' use.

The Spindle is indigenous throughout our islands, but cannot be said to be generally common; it is rarer in Scotland and Ireland than in England.

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