Ilex vomitoria "Dewerth (male)"

Yaupon is the small-leaved evergreen holly of the southeastern United States, native along the coastal plain from Virginia south to Texas and a member of the holly family, Aquifoliaceae. The species carries fine, glossy, oval leaves on pale gray twigs, takes shearing as willingly as boxwood, and shrugs off salt, drought, and heat, a combination that explains a long career as a Southern hedge and topiary plant. 'Dewerth' is a male clone, chosen for a dense, upright habit and unusually small, narrow leaves, and grown not for fruit, which male hollies never carry, but as the pollen partner that lets the berried females set a full crop.

Long before the nursery trade, yaupon was the source of the caffeinated 'black drink,' a roasted-leaf tea that Indigenous peoples of the Southeast brewed for ceremony, council, and trade, and that coastal colonists later took up as a homegrown coffee substitute. Yaupon remains North America's only caffeine-bearing native plant. The unfortunate species name, vomitoria, records a European misreading: early observers watched the ritual purging that sometimes accompanied the drink and blamed the holly, though the plant is not emetic in ordinary use. The common name is older and gentler, from the Catawban ya'pa, ya for tree and pa for leaf, a diminutive that means little more than 'small tree.'

This particular male came to Woodlanders from a Mississippi Experiment Station by way of Jim Berry of Flowerwood Nursery in Alabama, and was propagated and named by the late Tom Dodd, Jr. from a plant growing in 'Doc' Dewerth's garden in College Station, Texas. The narrow leaves and tight, ascending branches give 'Dewerth' a neater, more columnar bearing than the run of seedling yaupons.

In the garden, 'Dewerth' earns a place two ways. Set a plant within pollen range of berried females such as 'Hoskins Shadow' or 'Yawkey' and the females fruit heavily; used alone, the dense upright form clips into a fine-textured evergreen column, a slender screen, or the green architecture of a formal planting. Give this holly full sun for the tightest growth, though the shrub holds up in part shade, and pair with other rugged evergreens wherever a well-behaved, drought-proof backbone is wanted.