Plant of the Week
Blue Princess Holly
Latin: Ilex x meserveae 'Blue Princess'
According to Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest services a
person can render to mankind is to introduce a new and useful plant.
Mrs. Kathleen Meserve, a Long Island, N.Y., housewife and plant breeder
extraordinaire, did more than that she introduced an entirely new race of plants
and had them named after her in the process.
The blue hollies Meserve developed are evergreen shrubs that grow under 12
feet tall and broad and have red berries in the winter. The leaves are mostly
under 2 inches long with spiny margins and a blue coloration in the winter. Most
evergreen hollies do best in zones 7 to 9, but the blue hollies have extra
winter hardiness and can be grown as far north as Chicago, zone 5, without
winter injury.
Meserve grew up on Park Avenue in New York City where plants simply were not
in her universe. She and thousands of others were introduced to plants during
World War II when the Victory Garden program was started by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture to encourage homeowners to grow their own vegetables to save
commercial resources for the war effort.
After the war, the Meserves moved to a new shaded estate a few miles from
their old home. The new garden was unsuited for vegetables so she cast about for
a new plant to occupy her awakened interest in gardening. At a garden club
meeting, she became acquainted with hollies and was soon collecting all of the
sorts available from local nurseries.
Her breeding efforts were spurred by an interest in developing a dwarf form
of evergreen holly with red berries that was not too large for use in foundation
plantings. The red berried hollies of her acquaintance the English, Chinese and
American hollies were all trees that grew 20 feet or more
high and wide and required constant shearing to use in the landscape. She
managed to obtain seeds of Ilex rugosa, a dwarf evergreen holly of
northern Japan and Korea that had red berries. Her breeding efforts began in the
early 1950s.
Many of her crosses succeeded and seed developed. She planted the seeds and
two years later had seedlings from the crosses. Then, disaster struck. The
winter of 1956 was colder than most, with temperatures dropping to minus 17
degrees.
Upon inspecting her crosses in the spring, she realized most of her seedlings
had died, except for the plants that had Ilex rugosa as a parent. These
were planted on the grounds and watched for a few years. During the early years
of the 60s, she worked with several nurseries trying to get her new creations
as Luther Burbank would have called them into the marketplace. Finally Connard-Pyle,
the nursery that gave us the Peace hybrid tea rose, introduced the plants in 1964.
"Blue Girl" and "Blue Boy" were the first introductions but were
followed in 1972 by their children, "Blue Princess" and "Blue Prince," created by
crossing the original hybrid back to the Ilex rugosa parent.
The 1972 crosses were even more cold hardy than the parents and more compact.
Meserve went on to release about a dozen hybrid hollies and was awarded a
citation by the American Horticulture Society for her efforts as an amateur
plant breeder.
The blue hollies have gone on to become mainstays of the nursery trade and
are especially popular in colder parts of the country outside of the range where
most evergreen hollies will grow. In the South, they are best given an area that
receives some afternoon shade and a well drained soil. A male plant is required
to pollinate the female plant and insure good berry set.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
November 6, 1998
Back to Archives A - D
Back to Archives E - H
|
