Occasionally cultivated in the eastern states as an ornamental plant.
2. [Ilex Cassine] L. Dahoon.
Leaves oblanceolate to oblong-obovate, acute, mucronate or rarely rounded and occasionally emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, revolute and entire, or sometimes serrate above the middle with sharp mucronate teeth, puberulous above and densely pubescent below when they first unfold, becoming glabrous at maturity with the exception of scattered hairs on the lower surface of the broad midrib, dark green and lustrous above, pale below, 1½′—3′ long and ½′—1′ wide; petioles short, stout, thickened at the base, sparingly villose. Flowers on hairy pedicels, with acute scarious bractlets, in pedunculate clusters, 3—9-flowered on the staminate plant, usually 3-flowered on the pistillate plant sometimes nearly 1′ long, from the axils of leaves of the year or occasionally of the previous year; calyx-lobes acute, ciliate. Fruit ripening late in the autumn, persistent until the following spring, globose, sometimes ¼′ in diameter, bright or occasionally dull red or nearly yellow, solitary or often in clusters of 3’s; nutlets prominently few-ribbed on the back and sides; rounded at base, acute at apex.
A tree, 25°—30° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, and branches coated at first with dense silky pubescence persistent until the end of the second or third year, ultimately dark brown and marked by occasional lenticels; or often a low shrub. Winter-buds minute, acute, with lanceolate scales thickly coated with pale silky pubescence. Bark of the trunk about 1/16′ thick, dark gray, thickly covered and roughened by lenticels. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not strong, pale brown, with thick nearly white sapwood.
Distribution. Cold swamps and on their borders, in rich moist soil, or occasionally on the high sandy banks of Pine-barren streams; southeastern Virginia southward in the immediate neighborhood of the coast to the shores of Bay Biscayne and the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and in the interior of the peninsular in Polk and De Soto Counties, Florida, and along the Gulf coast to western Louisiana; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba (var. latifolia Ait.); nowhere abundant on the Atlantic coast; most common in western Florida and southern Alabama; passing through forms with elongated narrow leaves (var. angustifolia Ait., the common form of southern Alabama) into the variety myrtifolia Sarg. This is a low shrub or occasionally a slender wide-branched tree, with pale nearly white bark, puberulous branchlets, and crowded generally entire mucronate leaves ½′—1′ long, ⅛′ wide, with strongly reflexed margins, a very short petiole, and a broad prominent midrib; an inhabitant of Cypress-swamps and Pine-barren ponds or their margins, in the neighborhood of the coast, North Carolina to Louisiana.
Ilex Cassine is occasionally cultivated in Europe.
3. [Ilex vomitoria] Ait. Cassena. Yaupon.
Leaves elliptic to elliptic-oblong, obtuse, coarsely and remotely crenulate-serrate, coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, pale and opaque below, 1′—2′ long and ¼′—1′ wide, persistent for two or three years, generally falling just before the appearance of the new growth of their third season; petioles short, broad, and grooved. Flowers on slender club-shaped glabrous pedicels, with minute bractlets at the base, in short glabrous cymes on branchlets of the previous year, those of the staminate plant short-stemmed and many-flowered, those of the pistillate plant sessile and 1 or 2-flowered; calyx-lobes rounded, obtuse, often slightly ciliate; ovary contracted below the broad flat stigma. Fruit produced in great abundance, on stems not more than ¼′ long, ripening late in the autumn or in early winter, soon deciduous, or persistent until spring, scarlet, nearly globose, about ¼′ in diameter; nutlets obtuse at the ends, and prominently few-ribbed on the back and sides.