The holly and the ivy: wonderful words for Christmas plants

Which plants I wonder, gentle reader, do you associate with Christmas?

I strongly suspect several of this week’s Collins Word of the Day will spring to mind.

IYAM, certain plants just shout ‘Christmas’, don’t they? Well, perhaps some are a bit shoutier than others. The traditional holly, ivy, mistletoe and winterberry are on the subtler side, while on the brasher wing we find Christmas cactus and poinsettias. And there are other plants which come into prominence at this time of year, especially – for me, at any rate – cyclamens and amaryllis.

‘When they are both full grown’

It’s hardly surprising that historically people have associated holly and ivy with this time of year, hence with Christmas. After all, Christmas falls very near the shortest day of the ‘bleak midwinter’, when trees are leafless, few birds sing, colourful perennials have long since gone over, and sunshine is a scarce commodity. So we are crying out for Mother Nature to help us lighten and brighten up the surrounding greyness and grimness.

‘Of all the trees that are in the wood’

Holly, ivy and mistletoe are all three evergreens, and because they’re evergreen, they easily come to symbolise rebirth or eternal life. Holly also produces berries** at this time of year, thereby providing food for hungry birds, while their cheerful scarlet or crimson brightens any wreath, set off as they are against the glossy holly foliage.

In fact, so popular are mistletoe berries with one bird species that its names – the ‘common’ one and the scientific one – are drawn from the plant: the mistle thrush, whose zoological name Turdus viscivorus makes the same link, viscivorus meaning ‘that devours mistletoe’. Mistletoe is interesting scientifically speaking in that it’s what’s called hemiparasitic, which means it both photosynthesises and derives nourishment from its host, which in the UK is often a poor long-suffering apple tree.

Though the custom of stealing a kiss from someone under the ‘mystic mistletoe’ might seem as old as the hills, and though mistletoe has been included in Christmas decorations at least since the sixteenth century, the earliest reference to kissing under it is as late as 1813. A nineteenth-century letter writer to a newspaper described the practice as ‘the mirth-exciting challenger of youth and the test of maiden coyness’.

‘The holly bears the crown’

Christmas in origin was strategically timed at this time of year to replace pagan midwinter festivals. One such was the Roman Saturnalia, where holly boughs, among other greenery, were carried. The carol ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly’ with its very jolly ‘Fa-la-la -la-la | La-la, la, la’ is an example of a UK collaboration: the music is sixteenth-century Welsh, the words are by a Scotsman.

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests it’s unlucky to bring holly into the house before Christmas Eve. Which reminds me. In the dim and distant past (including my childhood), weren’t Christmas decorations and Christmas trees only ever put up and decorated on Christmas Eve? Actually, in the even dimmer and distanter past, say a century and a half ago, ‘Christmas decorations’ would have meant greenery and candles and nothing more.

The Christian link between holly and Christmas goes back to mediaeval times, and in the carol with the supremely hummable or singable tune I’ve scattered through this piece that symbolism is made explicit. For example, the white blossom represents the purity of the Saviour, according to Christian tradition, while the colour of the berries, ‘as red as any blood’, symbolises the blood Jesus shed on the cross.

Though the carol may sound in words and music almost as old as time itself, it was created in its current form only in the early twentieth century. In fact, it was that doyen of English folk-music history Cecil Sharp who discovered it in Chipping Camden in the Cotswolds long before that area had turned into London-at-the-weekend.

An ancient hangover cure

As for ivy, in classical times Bacchus/Dionysus and his satyrs are sometimes depicted sporting wreaths of ivy because it was thought to prevent drunkenness. That tradition continued into mediaeval times, partly strengthened by the observation and symbolism that the ivy plant often chokes grape vines. The renowned herbalist Nicholas Culpeper opined: ‘The speediest cure for a surfeit by wine is to drink a draught of the same liquor wherein a handful of bruised ivy leaves have been boiled.’

Anyone game to give it a try? After you, madam or sir.

Ivy also represents fidelity because of the way it stubbornly clings onto its host tree. In Victorian flower lore it represented, apart from fidelity, wedded love, friendship and affection. Anyone who’s ever tried removing ivy from a stone or brickwork wall it’s faithfully clinging to will have discovered a whole new world of meaning in the adjective clingy.

Perhaps many of us focus on holly, ivy and mistletoe at Christmastide,  but traditionally many other evergreens were used, such as box, laurel, rosemary, cypress and yew – in fact, ‘whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green’.

As regards ivy’s origins, it comes from Old English īfig, īfegnwhich morphed into Middle English ivi, yve, ivye, etc. and is related to the Old High German ebawi, ebah for ‘ivy’, from which Modern German Efeu derives. Its original sense was possibly ‘climber’.

What’s in a name?

We may make wreaths of holly, ivy and other greenery to decorate our front doors, and hang mistletoe strategically as botanical panders to a stolen snog, but the plants that brighten our spirits most are not ‘native’. Take the case of Christmas cactus, so named because it produces its carmine, cerise or vermilion flowers at this time of year. It’s one species in a genus of less than ten tropical plants from South Brazil. My top gardening tip, vouched for by the BBC’s Gardeners’ Question Time, is do not overwater. Although as tropical plants they like moisture, they also like it to drain off quickly as they hang on epiphytically to their host.

It’s as well we call it Christmas cactus: its botanical name would empty the shops. Like so many hundreds, if not thousands, of plants, it immortalises the name of the person who first classified it, namely a Monsieur Schlumberger, and one popular variety is Schlumbergera bridgesii. Similarly, it is a Mr Joel Roberts Poinsett we have to thank, ultimately, for the popularity of poinsettias. He introduced them to the USA from Mexico in the nineteenth century.

Talking of plants names after people, wisteria looks as if it was named after a certain person surnamed Wister. In fact, it was classified by a Mr Wistar, an American anatomist (1761–1818). The English botanist who named the genus after him misspelled his name, and the mistake has stuck ever since.

And talking of mistakes, mistletoe too owes its current shape to a misapprehension. The Old English was misteltān, mistel = ‘mistletoe’ and tān = ‘twig’. It entered Middle English in the form mistelta: people chopped off the letter –n, thinking it was the plural of the word for ‘toe’. Later, mistelta morphed to mistelto, and later still to mistletoe.

As I pen this, sitting on the windowsill of my study is my favourite cachepot containing two cyclamens. You’ll surely know the plant, those compact little beauties with variegated crinkly leaves and delicate flowers in shades of pink or violet with upswept petals that market stalls and garden centres are chockablock with at this time of year. Cyclamens do a grand job of providing heart-warming colour ‘in the bleak midwinter’, but beware: they won’t survive long outside, as I’ve found from experience. It’s their cousins, Cyclamen coum, which can go outside and peek cheerily through any snow. The indoor variety is Cyclamen persicum, ‘Persian cyclamen’, reflecting its Middle Eastern habitat, while the word cyclamen embodies the Greek for ‘circle’, with reference to the shape of the plant’s tuber.

Sitting on my bedroom windowsill is an amaryllis, which hopefully will survive my erratic watering and go on to produce its magnificent blooms in a few weeks. It’s already showing a tiny sliver of green leaf, so that makes me feel optimistic.

Whatever Christmas decorations and plants adorn your home – or none – I’ll take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones the very warmest greetings of the season.

** Holly berries are technically drupes because they contain a stone, aka ‘stony endocarp’.

By Jeremy Butterfield
Jeremy Butterfield is the former Editor-in-Chief of Collins Dictionaries, and editor of the fourth, revised edition of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.