"Are those Holly flowers, in November?"

... said Mrs Client, in wonderment.

"In November?" I echoed, desperately trying to remember what Holly flowers look like. And when they flower,

"Well, look, aren't these where the petals have been splashed onto the leaves, look!"

I looked. They did look exactly like a flattened flower, which had been papier mache-ed onto the leaves. 

There were lots of them, all over the tree, which is a variegated Holly, in case you were wondering.  It's been raining, on and off, for weeks, so the concept of flowers being smashed by heavy rain and plastered onto leaves below is perfectly plausible.

And before you ask, no, Holly leaves are not always prickly, especially on larger trees which don't get pruned much - the prickles form as a response to grazing, so areas which don't get grazed tend to have leaves with smooth margins. 

In modern times, by the way, "grazing" means "pruning or hedge-cutting" , rather than being noshed by animals, and this particular tree is allowed to grow, unchecked.  Hence the lack of prickles.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to remember what Holly flowers look like. Surely they don't appear at this time of year, because at this time of year, we are all looking at the berries, not the flowers, aren't we? 

I was also certain that Holly flowers are very small, so I thought it unlikely that these flowers, if they were flowers, came from the Holly - and I couldn't see anything else in the area which had white flowers.

"Hmmm, I'm not sure, it could be some sort of leaf miner damage," I commented, picking at the edge of the "flower" to see if I could lift it off.  Mrs Client wasn't convinced, and I had to agree that it did look rather like rain-splattered flowers. 

We continued to look amongst the foliage, and I spotted some tiny flower buds, still tightly closed. "Oh look," I said, "here are the flowers for next year, not even open yet."

"Well, maybe some of them opened earlier?" 

There was no answer to that, so what do we do? Answer, take photos, and/or take a sample home, then do some research.

It turned out to be laughably simple research - I typed "holly leaf miner" into google, selected "images" and half way down the page, there it was, exactly the same as the one in my hand. Phytomyza ilicis, commonly known as Holly leaf miner.

The good news is that it's just cosmetic damage, it doesn't hurt the tree overall, and damaged leaves can apparently remain on the tree for 5 years or more. 

But I wanted to know more about the flowers, so I did a bit more research - this is how I fill those rainy days, by the way, when it's too wet to work - and discovered that Holly normally flowers in late spring to early summer, so I was correct to say that the flower buds which I found were for next year's flowers.

Confusingly, I did find some photos on the internet which appeared to show Holly with flowers, open, next to bright red berries.  I have no explanation for this: in some cases you could see that the flowers were on a different, separate twig from the one with the berries, but that still doesn't explain how flowers - spring/summer - were present at the same time as berries - autumn/winter. 

Unless the berries were fake plastic ones: entirely possible, as the lady with the Holly Leaf Miner admitted that she didn't bother trying to keep the birds off the berries with netting, and could never remember to cut the berried branches now, while they are still covered in berries. (If you cut them now, and leave them in a cold garage or shed, they should still be fresh-looking for Christmas decorations) So she just cuts the branches that she wants, just before Christmas, and adds plastic berries!!

Oh, I suppose that's another answer: someone wanting to get a reference photo of berries and flowers together could cut the Holly in winter, and keep the cuttings in water, possibly in glycerine, until the following spring.

Or maybe they are opportune photos, taken when the weird weather fools the tree into opening the flowers, way, way too early?

Either way, normally, you won't see flowers and berries open at the same time, on a Holly tree.

And here's something interesting which I learned during my research - male and female Holly flowers are very different! 

You may already know that Holly trees are dioecious, which is a botanical term meaning that any one individual Holly tree will be either a male tree, or a female tree. So if you want berries, you have to buy a female tree: and if you want your female tree to product those berries, you need to have a male tree somewhere nearby, to fertilise the flowers.

How do you tell the difference? Not by the nursery cultivar names, that's for sure: annoyingly, Ilex 'Golden Queen' is in fact male, whilst Ilex 'Golden King' is actually female. Why? Why? *shakes head* What idiot got away with those names?

Moving on... here are the male flowers:

They have anthers, those projecting spikes, and at the tip of each anther you can see the bright yellow pollen.

That is the pollen which is carried by bees, hoverflies, and other pollinating insects, from one flower to the next.

With Holly, you need those insects to pick up a load of pollen from this tree, then to buzz across to your female Holly, whose flowers look like this:

Notice the complete lack of sticky-out stamens: instead, the female flowers have a central ball-like stigma, which - if fertilised - will develop into a berry, which will then turn the familiar bright red.

As always, it only needs one male tree to fertilise a number of female trees, so if you want berries, plant a copse of female trees, and be sure to include one or two males, and lo! and behold, berries will be yours!

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