Ilex mitis - Cape Holly Bonsai Seeds + FREE Bonsai eBook & FREE Seeds! - Frost Hardy

The African holly has attractive bark and berries. It grows throughout the country, making it suitable for colder, frosty gardens and for the art of Bonsai throughout South Africa. It is an evergreen tree, with a rounded canopy. The stems are normally round and the bark on the young tree is a pale grey-brown with patches of white, smooth with fine, transverse ridges and yellow- brown corky specks. As the tree becomes older it becomes evenly whitish grey with dark and rough spots. Young twigs are a reddish purple colour. The lance-shaped, simple, alternate leaves are a shiny dark green and are carried on plum-coloured stalks. They are pointed, sometimes curled tips and wavy, sometimes slightly toothed margins. The plum-coloured leaf stalks help to identify the tree. The midrib is sharply impressed above and prominent below. The small flowers are borne in spring or early summer in bunches between the leaf axils. They are white and sweetly scented. Ilex is the Latin name for the Holm oak, and mitis means unarmed, alluding to the leaves which are not prominently toothed, unlike some other species in the genus which have sharply spiny leaves, such as the traditional holly, Ilex aquifolium, used in Europe and North America for Christmas decorations.

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