This is our sixth wood feature giving information about rare and unusual woods of the world.   Some of these woods are used by  Higdon Writing Instruments for making our custom writing instruments and others are ones that we think are interesting and worth highlighting.  This week we are highlighting a wood that most everyone has heard but don’t know what it looks like, American Holly. American Holly or Ilex opaca grows in the southeastern states from eastern Texas to middle Florida and extents up along the eastern coast to Delaware where it is the State Tree.  It is particularly prevalent in the Piedmont, the Appalachians, and the southern coastal plain.  It favors the humid climate of the southeastern United States with rainfalls ranging from 40 to 80 inches with a wide range of temperatures within its range.  It is a very hardy broadleaf evergreen tree.  In a mature stand a tree can reach 50 to 70 feet in height; however, the champion American Holly, located in South Carolina, reached a height of 99 feet.

The wood from Holly is very unusual in that it is nearly perfectly white with very little grain due to its slow growth rate.  What is also unusual is that the time of year the tree is cut down is important if the wood is to be used as for ornamental purposes.  In order for the wood to stay white the tree must be harvested in the winter when the sap is down or the sap will stain the wood bluish gray. Most people know of Holly in two ways.  One of them is as an ornamental landscape tree and/or shrub.  With American Holly alone it is said that there have been more than 1,000 cultivars each with some sort of unique trait that makes it significant, although most of these are not commercially available.  With the Holly’s broad evergreen leaves and red berries it is also a very popular Christmas decoration.  The second thing that comes to people’s mind with Holly is Hollywood.  The origin of the name Hollywood is disputed but is not from American Holly.  That does not stop us from hoping that our Holly-wood pen should not be the official pen for the actors and actresses of Hollywood. Holly has been used as an ornamental wood because of its white color.  The color makes it a perfect inlay wood and can be a substitute for ivory.  Holly has also been used to make white chess pieces with ebony being used for the black pieces.  The unique color is the reason that Higdon Writing Instruments has chosen Holly as one of our wood selections.  Please follow along for future postings of information and rare and unusual woods.  If you have any questions please visit us here.