Ilex mucronata
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Ilex mucronata' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Synonyms
- Vaccinium mucronatum L.
- Nemopanthus canadensis (Michx.) DC.
- Ilex canadensis Michx.
- Nemopanthus mucronatus (L.) Druce
Other taxa in genus
- Ilex × altaclarensis
- Ilex aquifolium
- Ilex bioritsensis
- Ilex buergeri
- Ilex cassine
- Ilex ciliospinosa
- Ilex corallina
- Ilex cornuta
- Ilex crenata
- Ilex cyrtura
- Ilex decidua
- Ilex dipyrena
- Ilex fargesii
- Ilex forrestii
- Ilex geniculata
- Ilex glabra
- Ilex hayatana
- Ilex hookeri
- Ilex integra
- Ilex intricata
- Ilex kingiana
- Ilex laevigata
- Ilex latifolia
- Ilex linii
- Ilex macrocarpa
- Ilex melanotricha
- Ilex mitis
- Ilex montana
- Ilex nothofagifolia
- Ilex opaca
- Ilex pedunculosa
- Ilex perado
- Ilex pernyi
- Ilex purpurea
- Ilex rotunda
- Ilex rubra
- Ilex rugosa
- Ilex serrata
- Ilex shennongjiaensis
- Ilex spinigera
- Ilex verticillata
- Ilex vomitoria
- Ilex yunnanensis
A deciduous shrub 3 to 10 ft high, with glabrous young wood. Leaves alternate, oval, oblong or ovate, thin, not (or very slightly) toothed, tapered more abruptly towards the base than the apex, quite glabrous, 1 to 21⁄2 in. long, 1⁄2 to 11⁄8 in. wide; stalk 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 in. long. Flowers often unisexual, small, of no beauty; produced from the leaf-axils usually singly, occasionally a few together on a thread-like stalk 1⁄2 to 1 in. long. Fruit a globose berry, 1⁄4 to 1⁄3 in. wide, pale crimson, containing four or five hard bony nutlets.
Native of north-eastern N. America, previously placed in the monotypic genus Nemopanthus. Introduced in 1802, but appears never to have obtained much recognition in this country. Unless it bears its fruits freely it is of no garden value, and our summer sun is probably not hot enough to develop its best qualities in that respect. I have never seen it in Britain bearing fruit anything like so freely as it does in N. America.
Distinguished by its much reduced calyx and linear petals. Some plants have flowers of both sexes as well as perfect flowers, others have those of one sex only.