Perhaps more than any other time of the year, the holiday season has a slate of plants closely associated with it. Some of these plants have symbolic meanings, some are just decorative, but they’re all icons of this celebratory time of the year and they certainly help set a festive tone. But where do these plants come from, and how did they become so closely associated with the holidays? Well, we’re here to provide some answers so let’s dig in and learn a bit more about the origins of popular holiday plants.
We’ll start with a classic: holly (Ilex spp) is a much-loved garden plant that appears frequently in holiday décor. Some of this is due to the seasonal nature of the plant: the leave stay green year round and the berries provide a wonderful pop of red during the sometimes drab winter months. While there are over 570 species of Ilex found around the world, the most commonly used in both landscaping and holiday décor is Ilex aquifolium. Also known as English holly or common holly, Ilex aquifolium has a wide native range across Western and Southern Europe, northwest Africa, and parts of Asia. European settlers introduced this plant to the New World, where it has become an invasive species on the west coast of Canada and in parts of Hawaii.
Mistletoe is a popular term for a parasitic plant that grows in the branches of a host tree. Like holly, many mistletoe species stay green all winter and thus became popular holiday decoration plants. The most common species used in North America is the native Phoradendron leucarpum, but you may also encounter the native European Viscum album. Pre-Christian cultures in Europe sometimes used mistletoe as a symbol of fertility, which may explain some of the holiday traditions around the plant as well.
The first purely New World plant on our list, poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) is a truly striking plant, with small inflorecences marked by beautiful red accent leaves and green foliage. We’ve written about poinsettia elsewhere, but as a reminder this lovely plant is native to Mexico and Central America, and was first introduced to the US in the 1820s by US diplomat John Roberts Poinsett, for whom the plant is now named. Wild poinsettias were first cultivated by the Aztecs, and while the native wild populations are now fragmented and sadly isolated there are many domesticated cultivars grown around the world as holiday plants and houseplants.
Yew (Taxus baccata) is another European plant with a long rich history. Its native range spans Europe and the Caucasus, where these evergreen trees are used for making bows, musical instruments, and furniture. Later it became prized as a landscaping plant. The flesh of the red fruit is edible though the seeds are toxic, so we recommend avoiding using it as food. Yew has a long association with winter celebrations, going back into ancient history, and was likely quickly adopted as a holiday plant when Christianity spread to Europe. While less commonly used than some other tree species, yew does occasionally appear as an alternative type of Christmas tree in some places.
Let’s close with the big one: balsam fir (Abies balsamea) occupies a special place in many holiday festivities as is its one of the spaces most commonly used for home Christmas trees. Its native range spans eastern Canada and New England to as far west as Saskatchewan, but it is now cultivated around the world as a landscaping feature, lumber tree, and—yes--as a popular Christmas tree. Though other species are also used, balsam fir is the one most likely to be found in living rooms around North America during the holidays.
There are many more holiday plants, and many more stories about them, but this is a quick guide to the origins of some of the most popular. We hope this helps make your celebrations a bit richer by giving you some background on festive plants; at the very least you’ll have some interesting stories for holiday parties. Once again, happy holidays from all of us at Gardzen!
Leave a comment