Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 292, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1910 — CHRISTMAS BERRIES. [ARTICLE]

CHRISTMAS BERRIES.

Where the Holly Grows and How to Find the Best. The old fashioned Christmas green# were rosemary, ivy and bay. but In the 2,000 tdns of and decorating material which it is estimated that wo now use every year there is a much greater variety. Best loved of all is the glossy, r 1 berried holly. “Holm’* was the old English name for it, and it is thought to be identical with tbe “greenwood fee” of British ballads, and of Robin Hood fame. . On our side of the Atlantic the American holly (Ilex opaca) is found from Maine, where it grows as a shrub, to North and South Carolina, where it lifts a symmetrical cone of dark, shining leaves set with scarlet berry clusters along a beautiful trunk of gray and silver to the height of seventy or eighty feet. Delaware aud Maryland are usually credited with furnishing the best grades, of holly to Christ mas markets, but their "Three X” brand, as seen after shipment to northern cities, is not so finely berried as the Carolina holly, plentiful in the region around Asheville. In America there are three distinct grades of holly. Trees that stand <>n dry. barren billsides, as a, rule, are heavily laden with thick/ knoblike clusters of berries, but their leaves are likely to be small, yellowish and Imperfect. Follow some little stream to a sheltered, sunny glade where a holly trunk gleams white, awA there you will find leaves large, dark ■nd perfect, with a thick scarlet firsts age lighting the shadows evenly aft ever tbe tree.