Ilex mucronata is a species of holly

Holly

Ilex) is a genus of 400 to 600 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. The species are evergreen and deciduous trees, shrubs, and climbers from tropics to temperate zones world wide....

 native to eastern North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, and south to Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

 and West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

.

Taxonomy

It was formerly treated in its own monotypic genus as Nemopanthus mucronatus (L.) Loes., but transferred to Ilex on molecular data; it is closely related to Ilex amelanchier

Ilex amelanchier

Ilex amelanchier, the Swamp Holly, is a rare species of holly from southeastern North America. It is a close relative of Mountain Holly which formerly was placed in a monotypic genus Nemopanthus. I...

.

Description

Ilex mucronata is a deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

 growing to 3 m (rarely 4 m) tall. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are 1.5-7 cm long and 1-3 cm broad, with an entire or finely serrated margin and an acute apex, and a 0.5–2 cm petiole. The flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are inconspicuous, whitish to greenish-yellow, produced on slender peduncles 25 mm or more long; it is usually dioecious

Plant sexuality

Plant sexuality covers the wide variety of sexual reproduction systems found across the plant kingdom. This article describes morphological aspects of sexual reproduction of plants....

, with male and female flowers on separate plants. The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is a red drupe

Drupe

In botany, a drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries...

6–7 mm diameter containing three to five pits.

The name Mountain Holly is also sometimes used for the related Mountain Winterberry (Ilex montana).

Gallery

The white-petaled flower shown here, supposedly of Ilex mucronata, and the 2nd image, showing a flowering shrub of the same species, are actually images of an Amelanchier (Rosaceae) and nothing like the unisexual, very small, flowers of Ilex mucronata (Aquifoliaceae). For an accurate image of Ilex mucronata flowers (male), see:
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ILMU

External links

• USDA Plants Profile: Ilex mucronata (Catberry)