Holly Society of America

Last updated April 07, 2019

The Holly Society of America is a non-profit organization with a mission to stimulate interest, promote research, and collect and disseminate information about the genus Ilex (holly). It is located at 309 Buck Street, Millville, New Jersey; despite its name, it represents members from around the world.

A genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, as well as viruses, in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus.

Ilex, or holly, is a genus of about 480 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. The species are evergreen or deciduous trees, shrubs, and climbers from tropics to temperate zones worldwide.

Millville is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 28,400, reflecting an increase of 1,553 (+5.8%) from the 26,847 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 855 (+3.3%) from the 25,992 counted in the 1990 Census. Millville, Bridgeton and Vineland are the three principal New Jersey cities of the Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses those cities and all of Cumberland County for statistical purposes.

The society was established in 1947. Today it maintains the authoritative list of registered holly cultivars (as the International Cultivation Registration Authority for cultivated Ilex since 1958), funds research, and publishes the Holly Society Journal. It also provides guidelines for an official Holly Arboretum or Experimental Test Center, and recognizes organizations meeting these guidelines. Twenty arboreta have received such recognition to date, including arboreta in France, Belgium, and Korea.

Cultivar plant or grouping of plants selected for desirable characteristics

The term cultivar most commonly refers to an assemblage of plants selected for desirable characters that are maintained during propagation. More generally, cultivar refers to the most basic classification category of cultivated plants in the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP). Most cultivars arose in cultivation, but a few are special selections from the wild.

France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.

Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Western Europe. It is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of 30,688 square kilometres (11,849 sq mi) and has a population of more than 11.4 million. The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi and Liège.

Selected publications

International Checklist of Cultivated Ilex - Part 1, Ilex opaca, National Arboretum Contribution No. 3, 1973.
International Checklist of Cultivated Ilex - Part 2 Ilex crenata Thunberg ex J.A. Murray, National Arboretum Contribution No. 6, 1992.
Gene K. Eisenbeiss, "Ilex Cultivar Registration List, 1958-1993", Holly Society Journal 13(3). 1995.
Barton M. Bauers, Sr., A Guide to Identification of Cultivated Ilex, 1993.

Related Research Articles

Arboretum botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study

An arboretum in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees. More commonly a modern arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants and is intended at least in part for scientific study.

Ilex opaca, the American holly, is a species of holly, native to the eastern and south-central United States, from coastal Massachusetts south to central Florida, and west to southeastern Missouri and eastern Texas.

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is an arboretum located in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale sections of Boston, Massachusetts. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest "link" in the Emerald Necklace.

The Plant Collections Network (PCN) is a group of North American botanical gardens and arboreta that coordinates a continent-wide approach to plant germplasm preservation, and promotes excellence in plant collections management. The program is administered by the American Public Gardens Association from its headquarters in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania in collaboration with the USDA- Agricultural Research Service.

Ulmus davidiana var. japonica, the Japanese elm, is one of the larger and more graceful Asiatic elms, endemic to much of continental northeast Asia and Japan, where it grows in swamp forest on young alluvial soils, although much of this habitat has now been lost to intensive rice cultivation.

Ulmus 'Frontier' is an American hybrid cultivar, a United States National Arboretum introduction derived from a crossing of the European Field Elm Ulmus minor with the Chinese Elm Ulmus parvifolia in 1971. Released in 1990, the tree is a rare example of the hybridization of spring- and autumn-flowering elms.

Ulmus 'Cathedral' is a hybrid cultivar raised at University of Wisconsin–Madison patented in 1994. Arising from a chance crossing of the Japanese elm and Siberian elm, seed was sent in 1958 by Prof. Nobuku Takahashi and his colleagues at the Sapporo Botanical Garden of Hokkaido University, Sapporo, to Eugene Smalley at Wisconsin–Madison; 'Cathedral' is thus a sibling of 'Sapporo Autumn Gold'.

The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Christine Buisman' was the first cultivar released by the Dutch elm breeding programme, initiated in response to the less virulent form of Dutch elm disease (DED), Ophiostoma ulmi, which afflicted Europe's elms after the First World War. 'Christine Buisman' was selected from a batch of 390 seedlings grown from seed collected in the Parque de la Quinta de la Fuente del Berro, Madrid, by Mrs Van Eeghen, a friend of elm researcher Johanna Westerdijk, in 1929 and named for the elm disease researcher Christine Buisman. Originally identified as Ulmus foliacea, it was later treated as Ulmus × hollandica by Melville. However, more recent research in Belgium using DNA markers has reaffirmed 'Christine Buisman' as a clone of U. minor.

The American Elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Princeton' was originally selected in 1922 by New Jersey nurseryman William Flemer of Princeton Nurseries for its aesthetic merit. 'Princeton' was later found to have a moderate resistance to Dutch elm disease.

The American Elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Delaware' was originally selected from 35,000 seedlings inoculated with the Dutch elm disease fungus in USDA trials at Morristown, New Jersey.

The Siberian Elm cultivar Ulmus pumila 'Hansen' is a little-known American tree of obscure origin, possibly raised from seed collected by the horticulturist and botanist Prof. Niels Hansen during his expedition to Siberia in 1897.

Ulmus 'Patriot' is a hybrid cultivar raised by the United States National Arboretum in 1980. Derived from a crossing of the American hybrid 'Urban' with the Wilson's Elm cultivar 'Prospector', 'Patriot' was released to commerce, free of patent restrictions, in 1993.

The American Elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Columnaris' was propagated from a tree found by Mr John Dunbar at Conesus Lake, New York, before 1920. The tree should not be confused with U. americana var. columnarisRehder,J. Arnold Arbor. 3: 42, 1922.

The possible hybrid cultivar Ulmus 'Kansas Hybrid' was raised by the Kansas Nursery Co., Salina, Kansas in the 1920s from a seedling exhibiting hybrid characteristics, and maintained by grafting. The inclusion of the word "hybrid" is considered to render the cultivar name invalid.

The term grex, derived from the Latin noun grex, gregis meaning 'flock', has been coined to expand botanical nomenclature to describe hybrids of orchids, based solely on their parentage. Grex names are one of the three categories of plant names governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants; within a grex the cultivar group category can be used to refer to plants by their shared characteristics, and individual orchid plants can be selected and named as cultivars.

The American Iris Society is an organization dedicated to sharing information about and sponsoring research on the iris, a temperate zone plant that is often cultivated for its showy flowers. A major goal in its early years was to bring order to the then-confused nomenclature of the genus Iris, especially garden iris species and cultivars. Its members comprise horticulturists, botanists, gardeners, plant breeders, and nursery owners.

ArbNet is an international arboretum accreditation and networking program. The ArbNet program is supported and coordinated through The Morton Arboretum, with partners American Public Gardens Association and Botanic Gardens Conservation International. ArbNet was developed to set industry standards, foster partnerships and collaborations, and provide guidelines for professional development for tree-focused gardens. Globally, over 150 arboreta have been accredited since 2011. There are four different levels of accreditation depending on the arboretum's stage of development, capacity, and potential for scientific and conservation-related collaboration. All levels require a strategic plan, a focus on woody species, public access, and participation in the ArbNet community. Level I arboreta achieve a basic level of accreditation whereas Level IV arboreta reach the highest level of arboretum standards.

The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis' (:'willow-like'), occasionally referred to as the Twiggy Field Elm, was raised by Masters in 1817, and listed in 1831 as U. campestris viminalis, without description. Loudon added a general description in 1838, and the Cambridge University Herbarium acquired a leaf specimen of the tree in 1866. Moss, writing in 1912, said that the Ulmus campestris viminalis from Cambridge University Herbarium was the only elm he thought agreed with the original Plot's elm as illustrated by Dr. Plot in 1677 from specimens growing in an avenue and coppice at Hanwell near Banbury. Elwes and Henry (1913) also considered Loudon's Ulmus campestris viminalis to be Dr Plot's elm. Its 19th-century name, U. campestris var. viminalis, led the cultivar to be classified for a time as a variety of English Elm. On the Continent, 'Viminalis' was the Ulmus antarcticaHort., 'zierliche Ulme' [:'dainty elm'] of Kirchner's Arboretum Muscaviense (1864).

References

The Holly Society of America

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