A variety of holly having yellow berries is sometimes met with. Some little while ago, a branch with bright orange-coloured berries was exhibited at one of the meetings of the Linnæan Society, a scion of the yellow-fruited variety having been grafted on a scarlet-berried stock, with this curious result. The holly may also sometimes be met with having variegated leaves, the normal dark glossy green being blotched with a clear yellow or white. The lower leaves of the tree are edged with sharp spines, while the upper branches have the foliage quite free from these:—
“Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle, through their prickly round,
Can reach to wound;
But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.”
Southey.
Ornamentally, the holly may be met with in a glass quarry in Brandeston Church, Suffolk; also on a mediæval flooring-tile in the British Museum. We are not aware of any other ancient examples of its use, though doubtless those given do not exhaust the list. We trust, should another edition be called for, to be able, by further investigation, to remedy this shortcoming. The name holly is a corruption of holy, and alludes to its connection with Christmas. In some of the old herbals it is written “holy tree,” while in some countries this connection is rendered still more emphatic, the German name being Christdorn, the Danish and Swedish, Christorn.
The next subject we have chosen as an illustration of the adaptability of our native plants to the purposes of the ornamentist is the HOP (Humulus lupulus). Though we do not recall any example of its use in the ornament of the past, except in one of the capitals at Southwell Minster, it nevertheless appears to us a plant well deserving of a place in our columns. Its climbing habit, the beauty of the leaves, and the size of the cones, are all features which in an especial manner seem to fit it for the service of the designer; and it appears curious that, while so great a choice was at the disposal of the old carvers, they practically left so large a field untouched. Our architecture, for instance, abounds with details of oak, maple, and hawthorn; yet the nut and the wild rose, plants at least as striking and as common, occur but rarely, while the hop, bindweed, blackberry, and many others, seem to have been almost entirely neglected. The hop is found in a truly wild state in our hedgerows and copses, its weak stems,
Hop.
powerless to support themselves, trailing a long distance, and running up any tree or other support with which they may come in contact, and wreathing it with their beautiful clusters of foliage and fruit. It is also largely cultivated in England, France, Belgium, and Germany; its tonic properties, and the fragrant bitter principle found in it, chemically termed lupuline, being, it is almost needless to say, utilised in the making of beer. It was thus first used in the reign of Henry VIII., before that time the fresh top shoots of broom being employed to give the desired bitterness. The young shoots are in some parts of the country cooked and eaten like asparagus. Gerarde, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, says, “The hop joyeth in a fat and fruitfull ground, also it groweth amongst briers and thornes about the borders of fields. The flowers are used to season beere or ale with, and too many do cause bitternesse thereof, and are ill for the head. The manifold vertues of hops do manifest argue the wholesomnesse of beere, for the hops rather make it a physicall drinke to keep the body in health, than an ordinary drinke for the quenching of our thirst.” The leaves of the hop are sometimes heart-shaped, at others divided into three very distinctly marked lobes, in either case the margins being deeply serrate. The order to which the hop belongs includes many plants useful to man, as, for instance, among several others, the hemp, mulberry, fig, the Urostigma elasticum, yielding india-rubber, and the bread-fruit tree.
About forty million pounds weight of hops are annually employed in brewing in England. Kent and Surrey are the chief means of supply, though those grown in the rich soil of the Vale of Severn, in the neighbourhood of Worcester, are by no means inferior to the best Kentish. The crop is a very speculative one, the dangers which surround it being legion; the profits are, however, so great that the grower is reimbursed if one crop in three should turn out well. The hops grown in the neighbourhood of Farnham command the highest prices. The etymology of the word is unknown; the Germans term it Hopfen. Hops have been cultivated in Germany from time immemorial, and it is from thence that we derive both the plant and its name. Drawings of the natural growth will be found in E. B. 1284, S. C. 41; T. N. O. 125; and P. F. 4.
Yellow-horned Poppy.