Ilex mutchagara

Ilex mutchagara is a quiet, graceful evergreen holly from Okinawa, close enough to the familiar Japanese holly, Ilex crenata, that some botanists treat it as a form of that species. The small, glossy, dark green leaves carry fine teeth along the edges but no spines at all, and the habit is open and airy rather than dense, giving the shrub a lighter, more relaxed look than the tightly sheared boxwood-substitutes it resembles.

Native to Okinawa in the far south of Japan, mutchagara answers to the Japanese name shima-inu-tsuge, roughly the island form of the dog-boxleaf holly, a nod to that close kinship with crenata. Like the Japanese holly, this species reads more like a small-leaved boxwood than a spiny Christmas holly, and female plants ripen small black fruit rather than red, a subtle, dark-berried finish in fall.

A little history from the nursery: we had long labeled our plants of this holly as female, and we are indebted to a sharp-eyed customer who watched the flowers and let us know that they are, in fact, male. So the plants offered here will not fruit, but they make fine, well-behaved evergreens all the same, and a male serves as a pollen source for female hollies nearby.

Probably about as adaptable as the common Japanese holly, though a little less cold hardy, mutchagara suits the mild Southeast, in sun or part shade and ordinary well-drained soil. The open, graceful frame works as a light informal hedge, a screen, or a fine-textured evergreen in a mixed border, and the small leaves take shearing well where a tidier shape is wanted. Pair the shrub with camellias, aucuba, and other broadleaf evergreens for an easy, layered green.