Gardening with Chip

Winter Holiday Botany

English holly (Ilex aquifolium) was a powerful winter symbol in pre-Christian Europe. Their years were governed by the Holly King for six months from the summer solstice to the winter solstice. As the days got progressively longer, the Oak King battled for supremacy. The winter solstice ritual “battle” was close to Dec. 25.

Cut holly retains its deep green leaves and bright red berries, so it was widely used as adornments in those early winter rituals. With the conversion of much of Northern Europe to Christianity by the late first millennium AD, earlier non-Christian religious symbols were incorporated into the new religion.

There was considerable use of young holly tips for cattle fodder in the dark winter medieval days. There was also some use of holly as medicine. The dense, hard, and almost white wood is used in woodworking. Japan uses a holly species as one of the favored woods for “Go” boards.

Today, English holly is cultivated for Christmas wreaths and as a stand-alone landscape plant. Holly has, however, become a significant invasive species in the lower Columbia River region. The seeds are spread by birds eating the berries. There are male and female holly plants. It is quite difficult to kill. Cutting it down will release many dormant buds that form a mass of shoots. Cutting and treating the fresh-cut surface with the proper herbicide is the best control method.

Mistletoe also has a strong pre-Christian European history. It is an evergreen and mildly parasitic plant found mainly on oak trees. There are quite a few species. Recent OSU research indicates that it is barely, if at all, parasitic and won’t harm the oaks.

Oak trees were profoundly important to early Europeans. They provided food for them and their livestock (acorns), fuel for their hearths, and wood for construction and tools. Mistletoe was venerated because of its association with oaks.

However, it also had a long medicinal history going back to Roman times. Mistletoe berries were thought to be a cure-all with special abilities to reverse barrenness in livestock and humans. The ritual of kissing under a sprig of mistletoe came out of those beliefs. Early Christian proselytizers were less sure about that ritual and sought to ban mistletoe. That didn’t work.

Mistletoe is not common in the lower Columbia River region anymore. Most of the pre-European white oak forests are gone. It can be found on some small oak pockets here and there. It is much more common on remaining oak forests in the mid-Willamette valley where I grew up. When we went to harvest a live non-plantation Christmas tree on a family friend’s farm in the late 1950s, we always sought out some mistletoe. The farmer would shoot a piece off the tree. At home, it was shared and hung over a few doorways in the neighborhood.

For more mistletoe information, see pnwhandbooks.org.

Poinsettias are the newcomer to holiday botany traditions. Poinsettias are native to southern Mexico and northern Central America, where it was both cultivated and wild harvested. They were used in Aztec rituals for their colorful flower foliage (the bracts, to be precise). Since the poinsettia is a short-day plant (it needs a certain number of hours of darkness to start flowering), it bloomed as the days got shorter.

The Mayan and Aztec celebrations of the shortest days of the year coincided (as noted above) with Christmas. When the Spanish conquered Mexico, they burned most of Aztec and Mayan religious texts. Still, conversion by force is rarely successful, so they began to allow ancient ritual symbols like the poinsettia to be incorporated into Christian rituals.

In the early 1800s, the first American Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Poinsett, took an interest in this plant as a greenhouse and outdoor ornamental for his native South Carolina. He brought plants back and began to propagate them. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that several greenhouse nurserymen began the cultivation, breeding, propagation, and, ultimately, winter holiday sales in earnest. There was a major push in the 1950s to get the country to accept the poinsettia as an integral part of holiday décor. Television ad placements were critical to that change in the public’s perception.

There was a lot of competition to develop plants of the right size and with an attractive flower. Multiple grafts were often used. The industry was very secretive. One grower family had much of the market until the early 1990s when the propagation techniques were replicated by a university scientist and made public. Many nurseries entered the trade. Today, breeding has produced many different varieties of the original poinsettia.

There is a perception that the plant is poisonous. It is, to a small degree, dermally toxic to sensitive people, but its toxicity is very low in comparison with other plants in the Euphorbia family of which it is a member.

Take excess produce to the food bank, senior centers, or community meals programs. Cash donations to buy food for the food banks are also greatly appreciated. This is especially true now, since many of the federal food funds that helped the food banks have been cut hard. Sign up for Master Gardener training in either county.

Very helpful information sources are your local Extension offices. The Columbia County Extension is 503-397-3462, and the Wahkiakum County Extension is 360-795-3278. Advice on future garden topics is always welcome by emailing me at chip.bubl@oregonstate.edu.