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Old 14-11-2010, 01:49 PM
kay kay is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
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Originally Posted by Julian200 View Post
Yes, I will have a look at Eucalypts, thanks for the link.

The van tol hollies are self fertile, but for the other holly varieties I am planting do I need a male holly of the same variety to pollinate them, or will a wild male holly be suitable? as I do already have a large male wild holly in the garden.
Wild male holly should be OK. You can't get a 'male holly of the same variety' - the varieties in general are either male or female. So if you were starting from scratch, you'd choose a couple of female varieties and a male variety.

Slight complication in that I think there are two species from which varieties have been bred - I haven't looked in to it enough to know if they can fertilise each other. I didn't know about it when I planted mine! But it was interesting, once I planted a definite male, to see how many of the hollies already in the garden suddenly started producing berries!

One of my hollies (I think it is a Van Tol) has yellow berries. Rather a nice change and, while the other hollies get stripped of berries by the mistle thrushes by the middle of December, they don't go for the yellow berries.

Incidentally, holly keeps well in water in a cool place, so it is possible to cut your Christmas holly 2 weeks early while it still has berries.
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