Ilex cornuta 'D'Or'

Ilex cornuta 'D'Or' is the golden-fruited version of a garden classic, a glossy evergreen Chinese holly hung through fall and winter with large, clear yellow berries in place of the usual red. The dark green, leathery leaves are nearly spineless, most carrying just a single spine at the tip, so the effect is polished rather than fierce, the bright fruit standing out cleanly against the deep foliage.

The plant began as a happy accident. Sometime in the 1950s, on a Burford holly in Columbus, Georgia, a single branch sported yellow fruit rather than red, and the horticulturist Fred Galle spotted the oddity and propagated it at Callaway Gardens. 'D'Or', French for of gold, records the color, and in every other respect the holly matches the familiar 'Burfordii': the same vigor, the same handsome habit, the same single-spined leaf, but with berries the color of amber.

The species behind the sport, Ilex cornuta, is the Chinese holly, native to eastern China and Korea and long grown in the South for glossy evergreen toughness. The epithet cornuta means horned, for the stiff spines that arm the leaves of the wild form, though generations of selection have softened that armament in garden clones like this one. Holly flowers are small and white, easy to miss, but the bees find them, and on a female holly such as 'D'Or' they set the fruit that follows.

Rarely offered, 'D'Or' deserves a spot where the yellow fruit can be enjoyed against evergreen green: a sunny to lightly shaded bed with well-drained soil, a specimen by an entry, an unusual evergreen hedge, or a foil for red-berried hollies nearby. Like the standard Burford, the plant can grow considerably larger than a label suggests, so give the roots room. A few cuttings of the golden-berried branches bring something different to a winter arrangement.