Right up there with Christmas trees and mistletoe, hollies are the plants most closely connected with any holiday on the American calendar. After all, Bing Crosby sings "The Holly and the Ivy ...

SEATTLE — The holly and the ivy, the yuletide carol goes, invoke “sweet singing of the choir.” Not around here they don’t, where environmentalists and tens of thousands of volunteers ...

The fashion for trees is thought to have taken off in Britain in the mid-19th century when a drawing of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Windsor Castle, alongside their children and an ...

Although we link ivy and holly together, ivy actually only appears twice in the entire carol, in the first line and again in the final verse. Apart from those mentions, all the focus is on holly.

Ivy Ivy has been used to decorate homes and churches, alongside holly, since at least the 15th and 16th centries: in early carols, it was often used to symbolise females and their values, in ...

"The holly and the ivy, When they are both full grown Of all the trees that are in the wood The holly bears the crown O the rising of the sun And the running of the deer The playing ...

An ivy vine in the forest twining its way around a holly tree would have afforded pagans an opportunity to relate the two plants to each other. In plant symbology, the holly was associated with ...

December 17, 2016 at 1:00am GMT OVER the coming days, many of us will probably have some form of holly (llex aquifolium) in our houses, whether a real branch from a tree or a picture on a card. We ...

Environmentalists say runaway holly competes with native trees, while ivy forms thick mats on forest floors and urban lots that kill all other plants. It streaks up trunks to engulf trees with a ...