Holly

Holly (Ilex) is a genus of 400 to 600 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. The species are evergreen and deciduous trees, shrubs, and climbers from tropics to temperate zones worldwide. Holly has cultural significance due to its use as a decoration, the green leaves and red berries of certain species being associated with Christmas.

Carlton Alfred Smith, "Christmas Eve"

Quotes

• Green, slender, leaf-clad holly-boughs
  Were twisted gracefu' round her brows,
  I took her for some Scottish Muse,
  By that same token,
  An' come to stop those reckless vows,
  Would soon be broken.
  • Robert Burns, The Vision (1786), Duan I, Stanza 9.

• All green was vanished save of pine and yew,
  That still displayed their melancholy hue;
  Save the green holly with its berries red,
  And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread.
  • George Crabbe, Tales of the Hall (1819).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 369.

• Those hollies of themselves a shape
  As of an arbor took.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Three Graves, Part IV, Stanza 24.

• And as, when all the summer trees are seen
  So bright and green,
  The Holly leaves a sober hue display
  Less bright than they,
  But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
  What then so cheerful as the Holly-tree?
  • Robert Southey, The Holly-Tree.

• O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see
  The Holly-tree?
  The eye that contemplates it well perceives
  Its glossy leaves
  Ordered by an Intelligence so wise
  As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.
  • Robert Southey, The Holly-Tree, Stanza 1.