2023-12-24 16:40:28
There used to be more tinsel – but today the Christmas greenery is more diverse. Our current Advent wreath is woven from branches of plants from three different genera: the noble fir (You will go tall), the false cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) and the juniper Juniper scales. And who doesn’t know the discussions at the Christmas tree seller about whether there will be one again this year? A. northmanniana or rather one A. procia should be?
Perhaps the most Christmassy of all wintergreen plants is often strangely absent from our German homes: the European holly Holly aquifolium with its foliage, shiny dark green on the top, with elegant prickliness and drupes, which ripen into bright red balls on the female plants in October. You don’t need to decorate an Ilex branch like this, it’s naturally Christmassy.
Cultural anthropologists are more likely to reconstruct the connection the other way around: Precisely because the Celts were already there Holly aquifolium decorated their winter solstice festivals and the Romans celebrated their Saturnalia that fell in the second half of December – and Christianity then filled these dates with the new meaning of Christmas – that is precisely why the combination of bright red and dark green could seem so quintessentially Christmassy to us today.
Bild: Illustration Charlotte Wagner
The holly was also used at Easter, more precisely on Palm Sunday, which is why it is called that in German. Botanically speaking, Ilex trees and bushes have nothing to do with palm trees. And it’s the same thing with stabbing. The vast majority of the holly genus, which includes over four hundred species, lack spines completely or largely – for example Ilex paraguariensis, the mate bush native to South America. And Holly aquifolium also forms unsthorned foliage, although the “aqui-” in its species name is derived from the Latin “acer” (pointed).
The amazing thing is that both spiny and non-spiny leaves sprout on the same tree – and the latter always grow from a certain height, which is determined by the body size of the predators, mostly deer. Apparently the spikes cost energy, which the Ilex tree saves wherever possible. However, an individual plant can easily switch to the formation of spines if feeding damage signals the need for this.
In 2012, Spanish researchers im Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society confirms the assumption that it is a so-called epigenetic phenomenon: They found exactly the same gene sequences in spiny Ilex leaves as in non-spiny ones – and these produce prickliness. If the leaves lack the stinging defense, it’s due to methyl groups, molecular building blocks that mute the stinging genes, so to speak – a little biochemical magic, which is fitting because Harry Potter’s wand is made from holly wood. Goethe also owned an ilex wooden staff, which he received as a gift for his 70th birthday and used as a walking stick.
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One now wonders why Germans don’t treat plants with the same affection as Americans do – at least at Christmas. In fact, they are not allowed to. The Reich Nature Conservation Act of 1935 still prohibits the commercial use of wild Ilex plants. The species, which is fond of the Atlantic climate of Western Europe, is not exactly common in this country and was severely decimated in the 19th century. It was different in North America, where the Europeans brought them. In the American state of Oregon Holly aquifolium even officially an invasive species. Thanks to climate change, a return invasion cannot be ruled out; since 1987, Ilex populations in North Rhine-Westphalia have been increasing rapidly.
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