Preferred Habitat - Moist woods and thickets.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Texas,
chiefly near the coast and south of New York.
Happily we continue to borrow all the beautiful Old World
associations, poetical and legendary, that cluster about the
holly at Christmas time, although our native tree furnishes most
of our holiday decorations. So far back as Pliny's day, the
European holly had all manner of supernatural qualities
attributed to it: its insignificant little flowers caused water
to freeze, he tells us; because it was believed to repel
lightning, the Romans planted it near their houses; and a branch
of it thrown after any refractory animal, even if it did not hit
him, would subdue him instantly, and cause him to lie down meekly
beside the stick! Can it be that the Italian peasants, who still
believe cattle kneel in their stalls at midnight on the
anniversary of Jesus' birth, decorate the mangers on Christmas
eve with holly, among other plants, because of a survival of this
old pagan notion about its subduing effect on animals?
Would that the beautiful holly of English gardens (I.
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