{"id":61880,"date":"2014-12-15T00:07:02","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T04:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=61880"},"modified":"2014-12-16T13:48:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T17:48:03","slug":"toyon-california-holly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=61880","title":{"rendered":"Toyon, California Holly"},"content":{"rendered":"

This sturdy evergreen shrub native to California, Heteromeles arbutifolia, is also known as the Christmas Berry or California Holly. Here’s why:<\/p>\n

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There’s an old urban legend that early European settlers in Los Angeles, where this holly lookalike grew especially abundant, named their new home in its honor.
\nHollywoodland. Ultimately shortened to Hollywood<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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At a neighbor’s holiday party over the weekend, I discovered it in full-on berriment growing on the west side of their bungalow.
\nOf course, today I just had to beg for a few sprigs of berries to bring home.
\n(As far as I can tell, I’ve now coined that word “berriment,” and it just might stand as my lasting contribution to humankind.)
\nThe foamy mass in the background is a native buckwheat, but not<\/em>, because I asked, the giant St. Catherine’s Lace (Eriogonum giganteum).<\/p>\n

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Irresistible impulses, like mine, to bring indoors the toyon’s bright red berries began to threaten its very existence until a law was passed in the 1920s prohibiting picking the berries in the wild.
\nA ban local birds wildly celebrated. There’s a complicated bit of science and tanins and whatnot involved in the question of toxicity to humans, but the short, safe version is don’t<\/em>.
\nJust don’t eat the fresh berries. Notwithstanding the fact that local Indians did all manner of clever things with the flowers, berries and bark, for food and medicine.
\nUsual size is 8 to 15 feet, but it can and does grow bigger. My neighbor’s toyon is trained as a small tree, but it can also be grown as a hedge.
\nEasy and forgiving, sun or even part shade, tolerant of regular irrigation or, once established, summer drought.<\/p>\n

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Other plants in the vase are sprigs of lemon cypress and olive from our garden, very familiar to Evie, but the toyon from just a dozen houses away might as well have been from another country.
\nEvie immediately leapt onto the table to investigate. Bears and coyotes are known to eat the berries, but I have no idea what the digestive tract of Felis catus<\/em> would make of them.<\/p>\n

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Evie never sampled, but did make a thorough, full-vase investigation.<\/p>\n

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I filled a couple urns for the mantle too, mostly with lemon cypress and olive branches, with just a few sprigs of toyon berries, which manage to communicate holiday merriment even in very small quantities.<\/p>\n

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Toyon became the official native plant of Los Angeles on April 17, 2012.<\/p>\n

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For berries of your own to bring indoors during the winter holidays as much as you please, toyon is carried in local nurseries, usually at fall planting time.
\nLos Pilitas Nursery<\/a> is also a source, as well as the Theodore Payne Nursery<\/a> and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden’s Grow Native Nurseries<\/a>.
\nAny of the above resources will patiently and knowledgeably explain how toyon can be an essential evergreen in your summer-dry garden.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This sturdy evergreen shrub native to California, Heteromeles arbutifolia, is also known as the Christmas Berry or California Holly. Here’s why: There’s an old urban legend that early European settlers in Los Angeles, where this holly lookalike grew especially abundant, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2478,36],"tags":[1120,71,4030,4027,1113,4029,918,4031,1386,1544,4028,1114],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-g64","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61880"}],"version-history":[{"count":64,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61956,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61880\/revisions\/61956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}