Ilex latifolia Seeds | Tarajo Holly

Tarajo Holly (Ilex latifolia) with large glossy leaves and clusters of red berries on an evergreen tree — Tarajo Holly (*Ilex latifolia*): Aquifoliaceae, a large evergreen holly of southern China and Japan with big glossy leaves.

LATIN NAME: Ilex latifolia

COMMON NAME: Tarajo Holly

Plant Profile

Tarajo Holly is a large evergreen tree of the holly family from southern China and Japan, growing ten to fifteen metres tall with a rounded crown of broad, glossy, leathery leaves up to twenty centimetres long, far larger and bolder than the familiar spiny hollies. Its leaves are entire or barely toothed, and in spring it carries small, greenish-white flower clusters among them.

The female trees set heavy clusters of small, red berries that persist into winter, and the whole tree reads as a bold, subtropical presence rather than a hedge plant. It wants rich, moist ground and sun or part shade.

Science & Biotechnology

Its leaves are one of the sources of large-leaf kuding tea, the intensely bitter Chinese infusion, and chemists have profiled its triterpenoid saponins and caffeoylquinic acids alongside the kuding holly’s, the shared chemistry behind the shared bitterness.

The genus is a standing subject in caffeine-chemistry work, giving the world yerba mate and yaupon teas as well as the kuding group, and the study of these caffeinated hollies spans botany and pharmacology alike. Botanists separate it from the kuding holly by leaf width and flower characters, and the two species’ tea trade overlaps so completely that buyers rarely distinguish them. Botanists place it among the largest-leaved hardy hollies, and its foliage alone distinguishes it at a glance from every spiny garden relative.

Uses & Benefits

In the garden it is a bold evergreen tree for the mild, humid garden: huge glossy leaves, red berries for the birds, and a canopy that casts real shade within a couple of decades.

Its leaves brew the same bitter, sweet-returning tea as its kuding relative, a drink of southern Chinese tea houses; the ornamental hollies’ berries, by contrast, are for birds alone. In Japan and southern China it is planted in temple grounds and parks, where its great leaves catch the light and its red berries mark the winter.

Growing from Seed

The seeds need a long double dormancy: clean the pulp, stratify in damp sand through a warm season and then a cold one, or sow fresh and wait eighteen months; patience is the technique.

Grow the seedlings in light shade with steady moisture, pot them on yearly, and plant out into deep, moist, well-drained soil. Once rooted it takes drought and heat in its stride and needs no pruning beyond shaping. Holly roots resent disturbance, so plant it young and leave it; container-grown stock establishes far better than bare-root trees ever do. Feed an acid-leaning fertiliser in spring if the leaves pale, since the species shares the hollies’ preference for slightly acid, humus-rich ground. Site it where falling leaves can lie and rot into the root run; the tree feeds itself best when the ground beneath it is left untidy.

Our Take

A holly with leaves like bay and berries like beads, big enough to be a tree and bitter enough to be a tea. Stratify the seed and give it a decade.

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