Grow Like a Pro: Your Guide to Yaupon Holly Planting and Care
Quick Facts
The yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) is a staple in the American Southeast, easily identifiable by its brilliant red berries and shiny, dark evergreen leaves. Those leaves are incredibly caffeine- and antioxidant-rich. In the past, especially in pre-colonial and early colonial times, Native Americans turned yaupon holly leaves into a dark-colored tea called cassina, which was consumed during body purification rituals and at social functions.
Today, the yaupon holly is a favorite among landscapers and hedgers because of its winning appearance—and also because it is disease-free, relatively drought-tolerant, and extremely adaptable. The yaupon holly spans from Virginia to Texas, thriving in various configurations of sun, soil acidity, and soil type. During autumn, the yaupon holly reliably attracts song and game birds, who love to find its white flowers and red berries and nest inside its twigs. It also draws attention from critical pollinators like native and European honeybees. Although there are smaller dwarf cultivars, a typical yaupon holly shrub can reach around 25 feet in height at maturity.
How to Plant
You can find yaupon holly saplings commercially—either as containerized plants or balled-and-burlapped plants—and these are perfect for transplantation. Here are some steps to ensure that your yaupon holly has the best shot possible:
1. Find a sunny location. The yaupon holly can tough it out in a lot of locations, but being in full sun means that it can produce many more of its iconic red berries. Sandy, moist, well-draining soil is ideal
2. Plant in early spring, summer, or early autumn. Avoid planting it in especially cold winter weather.
3. Loosen the soil and dig a hole. Make sure your hole is, at minimum, one-and-a-half times as wide as the holly’s root ball. However, the hole should be a little shallower than the root ball, whose top should still appear slightly above-ground.
4. Add water and, if necessary, some extra soil. Water your plant to get it started. If you need more soil in order to “backfill” some of the soil volume, then add some more soil and gently tamp it down to remove the air inside.
5. Apply a thin layer of mulch for moisture. Be careful not to let the mulch touch the base of the plant itself—touching could cause rotting. Instead, cover the ground around the plant with about two inches of mulch.
Maintenance
How often—and how much—you water your yaupon holly in its early stages matters. If you water your plant for longer and less frequent periods, then its roots will grow deeper, and the plant will be more resilient in the long term. Fertilizers should be used sparingly, and high-nitrogen or lawn fertilizers should be avoided. Yaupon Hollies are tough and can handle themselves without fertilizer in most situations, but if you’re sure that using a fertilizer is the right step for you, the USDA recommends a complete fertilizer like 13-13-13.
Plant Care
Yaupon hollies have lovely natural shapes. However, you can also determine your plant’s shape through pruning. For example, you can shape your plant into a small tree by snipping low-hanging side branches and allowing just the trunk to push up. Frequent trimming will make its twigs and growth denser. This density is great for privacy if you want your plant to act as a screen.
Ecological Importance
Besides being beautiful, the yaupon holly makes big ecological contributions. It attracts critical pollinators like bees and feeds its berries to birds like robins, bluebirds, cedar waxwings, and red-naped sapsuckers. It also serves as the essential larval site for the American holly azure butterfly and the Henry’s elfin butterfly.
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References
Koeser, A. K., Hasing, G., Friedman, M. H., and Irving, R. B. (2015). Trees: North & Central Florida.UF IFAS. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/st311
Weeping yaupon holly. (2018). UF IFAS Extension, Gardening Solutions. https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/trees-and-shrubs/shrubs/weeping-yaupon-holly/
Ilex vomitoria. North Carolina State University Extension’s Gardener Plant Toolbox. https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/ilex-vomitoria/
Yaupon plant fact sheet. (2015). US Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service. https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/factsheet/pdf/fs_ilvo.pdf
