SWAMP HOLLY OR MEADOW HOLLY (Ilex (ZeCMlilq Walt.). Shrub to 30 ft. Straggling shrub, or slender tree, with stou t spreading branches and silvery white twigs, smooth, slim, often pearly gray. Bark of trunk warty with small excres cences, thin, light brown. Wood creamy white, hard, cicse grained, heavy. Leaves deciduous, clustered on the ends of side spurs, except on vigorous shoots, serrate, oblong-spatulate or narrow, tapering abruptly to the acute, sometimes notched, apex, and narrowly to the short, grooved petiole, thick, firm, to 3 inches long, pale green above, paler beneath. Flowers
minute in few-flowered clusters at base of leafy spurs. Fruit solitary or few in clusters, axillary; berries flattened, or glob ose, orange, or orange-scarlet, with few, ridged outlets. Dist.: Wet soil, Virginia to Florida; Missouri to Texas. Shrubby east of Mississippi River.