Ilex fargesii (Farges’s holly)

Native to western and central China, where it is found in Sichuan, south Gansu, west Hubei, Hunan and south Shaanxi provinces, at 1,500–3,000 m above sea level.

Ilex fargesii in Sichuan (Image: Martyn Rix)

An evergreen shrub or small tree up to 8 m high, with stout young branches. The leathery leaves are spineless, narrow, up to 12 cm long, dark green on the upper side and lighter green below, with a few incurved teeth at the apex of the leaf. The white flowers appear in May. The male flowers are reported to be fragrant and the female flowers are followed in the autumn by small, round, red fruits, carried in groups in the leaf axils.

Hand-coloured lithograph of Ilex fargesii by Lilian Snelling, after a watercolour by L. Snelling and Stella Ross-Craig, taken from Curtis's Botanical Magazine (Image: RBG Kew)

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Editor: Martyn Rix) provides an international forum of particular interest to botanists and horticulturists, plant ecologists and those with a special interest in botanical illustration.

Now well over two hundred years old, the Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants. Each four-part volume contains 24 plant portraits reproduced from watercolour originals by leading international botanical artists. Detailed but accessible articles combine horticultural and botanical information, history, conservation and economic uses of the plants described.

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Farges’s holly is cultivated as an ornamental. It is one of more than 1,000 plant species collected in China at the beginning of the twentieth century by Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson (1876-1930).

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Partnership aims to save plant life world wide, focusing on plants under threat and those of most use in the future. Seeds are dried, packaged and stored at a sub-zero temperature in our seed bank vault.

Number of seed collections stored in the Millennium Seed Bank: One.

Ilex fargesii can be seen growing along Holly Walk and in the Woodland Garden near the Temple of Aeolus at Kew, and in Westwood Valley at Wakehurst. Some specimens have been grown from seed collected by Kew staff (including Tony Kirkham) during expeditions to Sichuan (in 1996 and 2001).

Pressed and dried specimens of Ilex fargesii are held in Kew’s Herbarium where they are available to researchers by appointment. The details of some of these, including images, can be seen on-line in Kew’s Herbarium Catalogue.

Search Kew's databases for more information on this species

Flora of China (eFlora) – Ilex fargesii

Ernest Wilson Memorial Garden

Buy 'Wilson's China: A Century On' by Mark Flanagan and Tony Kirkham

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Wiley-Blackwell)