Holly
This tree’s jolly red berries and prickly leaves adorn every conceivable piece of Christmas paraphernalia, from napkins to wrapping paper. And yet one of the oft-asked questions when it comes to this tree in the garden is “why doesn’t my holly have any berries?” The plant family Ilex - of which the European holly Ilex aquifolium is a member - consists mostly of dioecious plants, meaning there are distinct male and female specimens, and only the female bears berries - and that’s provided there’s a male plant in the vicinity.
There are exceptions: I. aquifolium ‘Pyramidalis’ and ‘JC van Tol’ are both self-fertile, so they don’t need another plant for cross pollination and can produce berries all on their own. Their leaves are also much less spiny than regular I. aquifolium, which may or may not appeal. For more information on the vast range of hollies for gardens, check out this feature by Naomi Slade from the Guardian archive .
Non-festive fact: if you suffer from cats defecating on your seed beds, try laying some holly branches (preferably as spiny as possible - pyracantha is another option if you don’t have holly) across the bare soil. They won’t come near.
Christmas tree
What is a Christmas tree, exactly? The term is a catchall for an awful lot of different species around the world. In New Zealand, a tree that features on many a Christmas card is Metrosideros excelsa, a member of the myrtle family known to Maori people as pohutukawa. Settlers, noting its habit of producing beautiful red bottlebrush flowers around Christmas time, dubbed it the New Zealand Christmas tree. It’s too tender to grow outside in the UK unless you happen to live in the Isles of Scilly. In San Francisco, on the other hand, it grows rather too well. Australia has the New South Wales Christmas bush, Ceratopetalum gummiferum: it too turns red in December, although the colour is the result of the sepals of the seed capsules, not the preceding flowers, which are white.
Back in Britain, the Christmas tree tradition, though it’s been going strong over several centuries, has embraced more than a dozen different trees. The needle-shedding Christmas tree of my youth, the Norway spruce (Picea abies), has gradually been elbowed out of British front rooms in favour of other trees that hang onto their foliage far longer - the Nordmann fir (Abies nordmanniana) leading the way, followed by the noble fir (Abies nobilis), the blue spruce (Picea pungens Glauca Group), and most recently the Fraser fir (Abies fraseri).
The origins of the practice of decorating a tree for Christmas are far from clear, but most agree it originates in central Europe, perhaps some time in the 1500s. Even in his 1850 short story The Christmas Tree, Charles Dickens refers to it as “that pretty German toy” (you can hear Simon Callow read this tale aloud here). If you want to read more about its history, I highly recommend the book Inventing the Christmas Tree by Bernd Brunner. For a different perspective, try palaeobotanist Susannah Lydon’s blogpost on the Christmas tree as a survivor from Mesozoic times.
For strictly practical advice on keeping your real Christmas tree alive as long as possible, try the British Christmas Tree Growers Association.
Yule log
As festive customs go, the yule log has fared far worse than the Christmas tree. In the dining hall of Hever Castle in Kent hangs the nineteenth century painting Yule Log by Robert Alexander Hillingford. A man and a boy use ropes to haul a hefty section of the trunk of an oak tree, preceded by a prancing spaniel. They are headed for a huge fireplace, where this giant log will be burn from Christmas Eve right through until Twelfth Night. And there’s the rub, for us in the 21st century, where such fireplaces are a relative rarity, replaced by modern contrivances such as radiators and underfloor heating.
But of course the yule log predates Christmas anyway, having its origins in pagan winter solstice celebrations that took place across Europe in many variations, where a tree or log (oak or ash in England, but different woods elsewhere - cherry in France, for instance), was burned to ward off evil spirits. There’s much more detail to delve into on regional variations of the yule log tradition in Chambers’ Book of Days.
Today, you’re much more likely to be enjoying the chocolate replica, or if you are in the US, watching the now-traditional TV broadcast of a burning yule log. If you fancy making your very own a chocolate yule log, here’s the perfect recipe.
Boswellia
Boswellia may not be a familiar treename to you, but you will know the fragrant gum resin drawn from the trees of this genus from its key role in Christmas carols and nativity plays. Frankincense was one of the gifts bought by the three kings to the infant Jesus, according to the book of Matthew in the Bible.
My favourite Frankincense fact is that the Egyptians called it “sweat of the gods fallen to earth”. In fact it was highly valued by several cultures in ancient times, including the Romans, the Greeks and the Babylonians. For a full account of its uses, visit Marquette University’s Historians@Work blog.
Frankincense is still prized today, as an ingredient for making incense, for cosmetics, perfumes and so on. The boswellia tree still grows wild Oman, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen, and it is harvested in the same way as ancient times: the bark is cut and the resin that exudes is collected. Unfortunately Boswellia sacra is classed as near-threatened on the IUCN red list of endangered species. If you would like to see one of these trees in the flesh, there is a specimen of B. sacra growing in the Princess of Wales conservatory at Kew Gardens in London.
Myrhh
Myrhh is the product of another family of trees, Commiphora, that grow in the same part of the world as Boswellia. It’s another gum resin that is used for just the same purposes as frankincense: incense, perfumes, medicines and the like. In fact both trees are members of the Burseraceae or incense tree family.
Read the verse about myrhh in the carol We Three Kings of Orient Are and the role of this “bitter perfume” as a symbol of death is clear: Jesus’s body was embalmed with pounds of it, according to the account in John 19 (myrhh means “bitter” in Arabic). Like Boswellia, Commiphora is a shrubby desert tree: it is adapted to the harsh conditions with spines to discourage grazing animals. If you fancy trying to grow your own myrhh tree, you can buy a young Commiphora myrrha seedling from The Curious Plant Company in the UK, but bear in mind you will need to grow it as a houseplant so you’re unlikely to be harvesting resin from it.
