Ilex vomitoria (female) "Gold Top"

Yaupon is the small-leaved evergreen holly of the southeastern coastal plain, native from Virginia to Texas and a member of the holly family, Aquifoliaceae. Tough, salt tolerant, drought tolerant, and endlessly shearable, the species has anchored Southern gardens for generations. 'Gold Top' rings a color change on the familiar green: each spring the new growth flushes a bright yellow-green, gilding the tips of a compact, dense female shrub, and in fall the same plant hangs the usual red yaupon berries when a male grows nearby.

Yaupon is more than a well-mannered evergreen. Roasted yaupon leaves and twigs were the source of the caffeinated 'black drink' that Indigenous peoples of the Southeast brewed for ceremony, council, and trade, and that coastal colonists later drank as a homegrown coffee or tea. Yaupon remains North America's only caffeine-bearing native plant. The harsh species name, vomitoria, records a European misreading of the ritual purging that sometimes attended the drink, a charge the holly did not earn, being no emetic in ordinary use; the common name, from the Catawban ya'pa, means simply 'small tree.'

'Gold Top' is a Woodlanders introduction, grown from a single golden-topped plant found in Calhoun County on the Texas coast. The bright new growth is the whole point, a warm chartreuse flush that lights the crown of the shrub in spring and early summer before settling to green, giving a compact yaupon a season of color that the plain species cannot match.

Use 'Gold Top' where the spring gilding will be seen: near an entry, at the front of an evergreen border, or against darker foliage that throws the gold forward. The compact, dense habit clips readily into a low hedge or a rounded specimen, and the red winter berries, set with a male yaupon such as 'Dewerth' nearby, carry the plant into the cold months. Site in sun for the brightest new growth and heaviest fruit, and count on the same salt and drought tolerance that makes yaupon indispensable.