What’s the first thing that comes into your head when you read the title? In my case it triggers off a memory of my days as a choirboy, ‘The holly and the Ivy, when they are both full grown, of all the trees that are in the wood, the Holly bears the crown’. No, I didn’t have to look the words up, they are indelibly printed in my brain. As we always sang this at Christmas my earliest Holly associations were with decorating the house, this was wartime and a few sprigs stolen from a hedgerow and those interminable paper chains we used to make were all we had.
When you think about it, Holly is quite a strange plant. The sharp spines, the leathery green leaves and if you were lucky, the brilliant red berries. The fact that it didn’t shrivel up but looked fresh for the requisite twelve nights and the traditions associated with it. The first of these I learned was that Holly was used for the crown of thorns at the Crucifixion and the red berries were drops of Christ’s blood. The Robin’s red breast was due to the fact that it had dashed itself against the crown in it’s despair at the death of Christ.
Another ‘tradition’ I was told about was that the Druids used Holly and Mistletoe as part of their rituals. It was many years later while doing research into early religions and beliefs that I realised that there was no firm evidence for this and it is most likely to be a fancy fabricated by the 18th century worthies who re-invented the Druids and founded the modern ‘religion’. However, there is reliable research that suggests that as far back as the Romans, Holly was regarded as a special plant, used for decorations and given as a token of friendship. In many parts of the world it was used as a herbal remedy, usually as a purgative, and was so useful that the plant gained a special place in these societies. The South American tea, yerba mate, is made from holly leaves.
From time to time since I have heard other traditions, I remember a farmer once telling me that he would never cut holly for a stick because it was unlucky. Other people have told me that such a stick is lucky because the Holly has always had a reputation as a protective plant. I think that much of this may have started from the fact that it makes such a good, stock-proof fence but in later years this was expanded into many more beliefs in folk-lore. Witches were thought to fly along the tops of hedges on their broomsticks and tall holly trees impeded their progress. There is a tradition that a Holly tree near a house gives protection from lightning. Quite recently some research was done on this and it was found that the spines on the leaves could be effective in doing this due to the property of anything with a sharp point attracting electrical charges. So there may be a grain of truth in this one.
In purely practical terms, holly wood has always been highly regarded as a timber. It is a strong white hardwood which is very tough and flexible. The Romans used it for the shafts of their chariots because of these properties. It is ideal for making a hammer or axe shaft. In later years it was used extensively to make mock Ebony. Many Georgian silver teapots had wooden handles. The most expensive used Ebony but many made do with holly wood dyed black. Being close-grained it is a very good wood for turning in a lathe. Many an ‘ebony’ chess set, door or drawer knob was made from dyed holly.
On another level, I have been struck by the fact that the best way to plot the most ancient hedgerows in our landscape is to look for the Holly Trees. I have never found a hedge that I can securely date as ancient that didn’t contain a considerable proportion of holly trees. At first I thought they had been deliberately planted because of the regard with which it was held but then I learned an interesting fact about Holly propagation. If you examine a large, self-sown holly tree carefully you’ll find that it is a very clever plant. It only has spiny leaves up to about eight feet, the limit to which a horse, deer or other animal can reach if it was browsing. Have you ever noticed that some cultivated Holly trees have prickly leaves and some have no spines? This is because generally speaking, if you grow a Holly from a cutting that was low in the tree it will reproduce the spines but if you select a non-spiny cutting it will grow without spines. Remembering this, I looked at the hedgerow Holly trees again and sure enough, they have spines to eight feet and non spiny leaves above that level. This suggests that they are self-sown trees. In other words they have reproduced because a bird ate the berry but either left or couldn’t digest the seed and it ended up in the hedgerow. A seed dropped in the field would be cut or grazed off before it could establish itself.
There is another factor to consider. Holly Trees are not a long-lived species. In exceptional circumstances they have been known to reach 200 years but the vast majority fail before that, especially in our colder northern climes. It follows then that none of the trees we see now are a result of conscious placement by an ancient people who revered the tree because of traditions associated with it. They all date from the nineteenth century at the earliest.
So, we have a bit of a problem. How come these trees are a component of ancient hedgerows but can’t be ancient themselves? There is the obvious solution, they are all self-seeded from previous inhabitants of the hedge but this leaves me with more questions, why are they so numerous and what was the origin in the first place?
Knowing me, you will have guessed that I have some sort of an answer but to do it justice I need more space so you’ll have to wait until next week for my theory. I promise you it’s quite surprising!
A cultivated Holly with spines on the leaves right to the top.
SCG/11 November 2006
1071 words.
