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Ilex intricata Hook. f.

Modern name

Ilex intricata Hook.f.

A prostrate evergreen shrub forming wide, dense mats at high altitudes, glabrous in all its parts. Leaves dull green, leathery, densely set on the shoots, obovate to elliptic, rounded at the apex up to 58 in. long and half as wide; stalks very short. Flowers inconspicuous, in small clusters. Fruits bright red, globose, about 316 in. across, borne singly or in clusters of two or three.

Native of the Himalaya from Sikkim eastward, S.E. Tibet, N.E. Upper Burma, and Yunnan; the date of introduction is not certain but seeds were sent home by Kingdon Ward in 1931 from Upper Burma, where he found it growing beneath rhododendron bushes in the upper Abies forest and remarked in his field note, ‘One of the most fascinating of Alpine hollies.’

I. nothofagifolia F. K. Ward I. oblata (W. E. Evans) Comber; I. intricata var. oblata W. E. Evans – Although very different in habit, this species is closely allied to I. intricata. It makes a horizontally branched shrub or small tree with broadly ovate to orbicular leaves (sometimes broader than long). The young stems are densely warted. Native of N.E. Upper Burma and bordering parts of Yunnan and Assam; discovered by Farrer in 1919. Seeds were probably sent by him and later by Kingdon Ward, and an account of it in the wild will be found in Kingdon Ward’s Plant Hunting on the Edge of the World (1930), pp. 223-224. It was reintroduced by Cox and Hutchison from the Assam Himalaya in 1963.



From the Supplement (Vol. V)

The western limit of this species is in Nepal, not Sikkim, as stated in the original impression.

Genus

Ilex

Other species in the genus