Ilex glabra 'Leucocarpa'

Ilex glabra 'Leucocarpa' is the white-berried surprise among the inkberries, a native evergreen holly that trades the usual near-black fruit for berries of clean ivory white. On the ordinary inkberry the dark berries all but vanish against the deep green leaves, but here the pale fruit stands out cleanly and holds on the branches from fall right through to spring, a quiet, unexpected show in the winter garden.

Behind the novelty stands one of the finest native broadleaf evergreens of eastern North America. Ilex glabra, the inkberry or gallberry, ranges along the coastal plain from Nova Scotia to Florida and west to the Gulf, growing in sandy, acid, often boggy ground. The epithet glabra means smooth, for the neat, spineless, glossy leaves that set inkberry apart from the prickly hollies, and 'Leucocarpa', white-fruited, names this pale-berried form.

For all the focus on fruit color, the small greenish-white flowers matter most to the bees. Inkberry nectar yields the celebrated gallberry honey, a mild, light honey long tied to the pinewoods and bogs of the South, so a stand of these hollies feeds pollinators as generously as the plants decorate the garden. As with any holly, the berries, white in this case, appear only on female plants, so a male inkberry set nearby is needed to insure the crop.

Neat, rounded, and evergreen to the ground, inkberry 'Leucocarpa' works as a low informal hedge, a foundation planting, a massing in a rain garden, or a companion to azaleas, camellias, and other acid-loving plants. Give the roots moist, acidic soil in sun to part shade, keep the ground from drying out, and the white winter berries will repay the spot. Pair the shrub with sweetbay, itea, and native ferns in the same damp company.