English Holly, that beautiful Christmas time plant that has the three red berries and the three leaves that are spikey–perfect for decor or a floral arrangement….

THIS IS AN INVASIVE SPECIES–I mean we could have guessed that because here in Canada,  its called “English Holly”.

Now this beautiful species is usually a big shrub, or tree like structure and it grows fast! English Holly is usually 7-10m tall (yeah. just a big bush). Its main threat to the native species is because of its height and density it causes a lot of shade on the native plants and they become deprived of nutrients. Seriously, English Holly is a water hogger, it’s roots take all the nutrients it can in the ground killing off anything that isn’t it. The berries on this “bush” are also poisonous to people (but not birds) .

This plant originally came from the British Isles all the way along to Southern and Central Europe.

 

The only “good” news here is that English Holly can only reproduce by the pollination by bees, so this means we have to rely on a female tree being close enough to a male tree (100ftish)…and also there has to be BEES, which humans suck at keeping alive so yes I’ll just end it on this note….