AFRICA’S HOLLY

Robert Baigrie African holly

Ilex mitis

Ancient amphitheatres are associated with combat and heroic death, but the one I know is infused with magic, and has a dark green sentinel guarding its

watery portal. This is Milner amphitheatre, below Milner’s 2000-metre Peak near Ceres.

To get there is a tough multi-day hike, ending with a treacherous descent between boulders the size of cars. When at last we wearily scrambled out of there, it loomed above us, foreboding in the gloaming: a magnificent holly, her roots our drawbridge across her ferny moat.

Next morning, the sun suffusing the cliffs with red and gold, a swaying waterfall drifted back and forth across the Hobbiton landscape, sprinkling the glowing green sentinel at her post. At about 20 metres, she was not the tallest specimen I’ve seen, but certainly the most evocative of this beautiful species: Ilex mitis, the only African holly.

‘Mimosa, jacaranda [...] And tulip-tree, igniting bloom from bloom, While through their zodiac of flowery signs The flame-furred sunlike some huge moth is whirled circling forever, as he fades or shines, Around the open blossom of the world.’ – Roy Campbell

A short stroll through Kirstenbosch Gardens will provide two worthy rivals – a magnificent pair overlooking Colonel Bird’s bath, fed by Table Mountain’s aquifer. There is also a champion specimen above the Oudebosch forest in the Kogelberg, several metres in circumference and 30 metres high. Lower down the slopes are numerous smaller specimens, contributing in all seasons to the shady calm of the forest canopy.

Ilex mitis likes its feet damp, so it’s usually seen in riverine shade, which accentuates its almost white bark and dark, shiny, lance-shaped leaves on plum-coloured stalks. Like its northern-hemisphere Christmassy cousins, Ilex mitis produces densely packed stems of red winter berries; but its leaves are not spiny, instead elliptical with a fine tip. In spring or early summer it produces bunches of small, sweet-scented white flowers – a rich source of nectar for bees – resulting in a pale, tasty honey. It is one of our faster growing indigenous trees. It germinates and transplants well and is propagated by the seeds of its fruit, a favourite of many birds.

There are over 400 species in the holly family, mostly in Asia and the American tropics, and while the European holly is redolent with Druidic, Celtic, Roman and Christian mythology, our Cape holly has its own traditions and uses. Its wood is light and easily worked – for furniture, guitars and drums, flooring, beehives, vats, and in past times, wagon buckboards, ladies’ shoe heels and vehicle interior trim. Bark and root decoctions are used as purgatives, for seizures and against gonorrhoea. The bark and leaves contain saponins that create a lather when leaves are rubbed in water – the Knysna woodcutters washed with it in forest streams. For the same reason, the isiZulu name is iPhuphuma – ‘It washes out’ – and the Tshivenda name translates as ‘milk pail washer’.

In southern Africa it occurs at sea-level, but in its other African locations Ilex mitis occurs at altitude, up to 3000 metres in East Africa, Ethiopia and Madagascar. Here it prefers evergreen rainforests, also keeping its feet damp in fertile, well-drained riverine soils.

The name mitis translates from Latin as soft or mellow and sweet, and besides these virtues, it is hardy, relatively drought resistant, beautiful and useful. In all, Africa has chosen wisely its sole representative of the Ilex family.