Ilex spinigera (female)

Ilex spinigera is a holly with a deep past, a rare evergreen from the Hyrcanian forests that ring the southern Caspian Sea in northern Iran. Small, glossy, dark green leaves edged with fine spines clothe a dense small tree or large shrub, and on female plants such as this one bright red berries glow against the foliage through fall and into winter, the classic holly effect on an uncommonly ancient plant.

Those Hyrcanian woods are living museums. When Ice Age glaciers swept away the broadleaf forests of Europe, a band of them survived along the sheltered Caspian slopes, and Ilex spinigera is one of the relics that came through, a remnant of an ancient Arcto-Tertiary flora and one of only a handful of hollies native to southwest Asia. To grow this holly is to keep a small piece of that vanished forest.

The epithet spinigera means spine-bearing, for the neatly toothed, prickly leaf, and the plant is a close eastern cousin of the familiar English holly, Ilex aquifolium, which it resembles in miniature. Shade is no trouble; in the wild the holly grows in the forest understory beneath taller trees, so dappled light or even fairly deep shade suits the plant well, an unusual and useful trait in an evergreen holly.

Rarely offered and little known in American gardens, Caspian holly makes a distinctive evergreen specimen for a shaded or woodland-edge spot, a collector's holly, or a quiet, glossy screen in part to full shade and moist, well-drained soil. As a female, this plant needs a male holly in range to set the red fruit. Give the roots shelter from harsh, drying winter wind, and pair the shrub with other broadleaf evergreens under high shade.