Opposite Sex Marriage.

6-3-09 SHORT HILLS: The English holly are all in bloom. The trees are either male or female unlike most plants which have both sexual parts on each flower. [Often, the flower must be fertilized by pollen from a different flower to avoid inbreeding.] The holly, both sexes, are aromatic with a sweet perfume that is quite recognizable and seems different, to me, from that of other plants. I may catch the aroma even before I notice the tree.

We have three large holly trees, two female and one male, that are probably around sixty years old and flower heavily. The female holly trees are heavily fruited in the fall, the berries turn red after the first frost, but are mostly bare of berries by March. There are fifteen volunteer hollies scattered around our 1.5 acre yard, presumably from birds eating the berries of our female hollies during the winter and later pooping the undigested seed elsewhere in the yard.

I wondered if the sex of the “children” was actually an equal distribution as one would expect. Of the eleven trees with flowers, there were five females and six males, a toss-up. Four of the volunteers were small, prepubertal[?], and had no flowers.


Right-Female English Holly with green central ball that becomes the berry.







Left-Male Holly, no berry, four pollen laden stamens.




Today I planted pachysandra cuttings in the grassless, dark area under the yew hedge, about 100 sq. ft. I took pachysandra that had overgrown its bed, spilled out into the driveway and needed trimming. Last night and today we had heavy showers, a good day to transplant.

New blooms: mock orange, arrowwood viburnum.