Kitchen Garden Forum

Dear All,
gather your holly now and store it in a bucket away from mice and birds in a cool place and it will keep until Christmas. The pigeons are stripping the berries from the bushes where I work as we speak.
Regards Sally Wright.

Perhaps they know something we don't?

Dear Sally, it's the blackbirds that seem to like them where i live, but i cut mine today.
Thanks for the reminder.

We have a large variegated holly (Golden King?) which provides us with masses of berried branches every year. The birds - mainly blackbirds - which eat all our wild holly berries, will not touch the variegated tree's berries until well into the new year, March usually.

Dear Alan,
for us it is the I. aquifolium (common holly) that go first then the I. x altaclarensis (highclare holly)then the I. "J.C. Van Tol" (the only self fertile one - guaranteed berries and not too prickly). The birds DO seem to leave the varigated ones alone. Perhaps the varigation does something to the flavour that the birds don't like until there is nothing else to eat.
The same thing seems to happen with the cotoneasters, berberis and pyracanthas. Certain varieties always get eaten first and some never do.
Regards Sally Wright.

Possibly akin to apple trees?

Each cultivar has a different flavour and sweetness.

Dear Peter,
seems reasonable, though I don't think I will be testing this hypothesis personally!
Regards Sally Wright

Just realised from Sally's post that my comment could be rashly interpreted.

To rephrase my previous post :

Possibly akin to apple trees?

To the birds each cultivar has a different flavour and sweetness.