Ilex verticillata x serrata 'Raritan Chief'

Ilex 'Raritan Chief' is a male winterberry with a long working day. A compact hybrid of the native winterberry, Ilex verticillata, and the Japanese winterberry, Ilex serrata, this deciduous holly was bred as a pollinizer rather than a show plant, and a long bloom season makes 'Raritan Chief' one of the most flexible pollinizers in the group.

The name points to the source. 'Raritan Chief' came from the breeding work of Dr. Elwin Orton at Rutgers University, on the Raritan River in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a program that produced some of the best hollies in American gardens. Orton crossed the American and Japanese winterberries for hybrid vigor, and this male selection carries that strength on a neat, compact frame.

Because 'Raritan Chief' flowers over a long stretch rather than a narrow window, a single plant overlaps the bloom of many different female winterberries and pollinizes them all. The classic partner is the famous 'Sparkleberry', a female of the same parentage, but 'Raritan Chief' also sets fruit on 'Winter Red', 'Autumn Glow', 'Harvest Red', and others, early and late alike, one male covering a whole mixed planting.

As a plant, 'Raritan Chief' stays compact and rounded, four or five feet tall, clean green through summer and unremarkable in winter once the leaves drop, exactly what a working pollinizer should be. Tuck one into the back of a wet border or among the females themselves, within about fifty feet, in the moist to wet, acidic soil the whole clan loves and full sun to part shade, and let the females carry the berries while this quiet hybrid does the essential work.