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Aquifoliaceae family

Sarvis Holly Ilex amelanchier

Native Specialist-bee host
USDA livestock toxicity rating — not a pet assessment. See the Toxicity detail further down for what's documented.

Sarvis Holly is a perennial tree native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 16 ft and blooms Apr in full sun, with red fruit. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Ilex amelanchier, the swamp holly or sarvis holly, is a rare species of holly from the southeastern United States. It is a close relative of mountain holly which used to be placed in a monotypic genus Nemopanthus. Ilex amelanchier grows near water, for example on streambanks. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Full sun
Soil & moisture
Medium moisture
Soil pH
3.5–6.5
Fertility need
Low
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam)
Hardiness
USDA zone 9+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
Derived (allometric) — width = height × functional-class crown ratio fit on USDA Urban Tree DB · Tallo; method per Jucker et al. 2022, Pretzsch et al. 2015 — Mature width
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Lifespan: USDA’s lifespan scale for trees: short = under ~100 years · moderate = 100–250 · long = over 250. Balsam fir and other short-lived conifers are genuinely short for a tree, not short like an annual.
Height
16 ft
Mature width
~ 13 ft wide DERIVED derived estimate — open-grown crown allometry (height × growth-form ratio); not a measurement
Spacing
4–5 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
None — clumping
Growth rate
Slow
Growth form
Multiple stems
Lifespan
Perennial · long-lived
Foliage
Broadleaf · medium texture
Active growth
Spring
Fruit
Red persists into winter
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed, Bare root, Container
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Summer – Autumn seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Deer browsing
Medium moderately palatable
Resprouts if cut
Yes regrows after top-kill
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — Rated OBL on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Fruit
Bloom (the flower's colour) Ripe fruit
Bloom · Apr — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
Fruit · approximate season (USDA Seed Period), clamped to after bloom · persists into winter
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~39 caterpillar species

Ilex supports ~39 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a strong genus.

Recorded feeding on Ilex in North America, including:

Acharia stimulea · Saddleback Caterpillar Moth Apatelodes torrefacta · Spotted Apatelodes Argyrotaenia citrana · leafroller moth Argyrotaenia velutinana · Red-Banded Leafroller Autographa californica · Alfalfa Looper Moth Automeris io · giant silk moth
+ 8 more species →
Bucculatrix ilecella · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Celastrina argiolus · Holly Blue Cepphis armataria · Scallop Moth Choristoneura rosaceana · Oblique-Banded Leafroller Cicinnus melsheimeri · Melsheimer's Sack-Bearer Moth Ditula angustiorana · Red-Barred Tortrix Dolba hyloeus · Pawpaw Sphinx Harrisimemna trisignata · Harris's Three Spot
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Ilex is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 20 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Sarvis Holly, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Blackgum · 90% Bald Cypress · 90% Red Maple · 65% Swamp Titi · 50% Buttonbush · 45% Sweetgum · 45% Loblolly Pine · 45% Roundleaf Greenbrier · 35%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (3) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Mature width Derived

For woody plants that have a height but no measured crown, we estimate width = height × a crown-to-height ratio fit for that plant’s form (conifers narrower than broadleaf trees, shrubs widest), calibrated on our measured open-grown crowns and capped at the largest one ever measured. A measured crown always wins; herbaceous plants get nothing (no anchor).

Honest limits: A coarse class-median estimate for garden-scale spacing, not a measurement; woody single/multi-stem forms only.

Allometric basis: Jucker et al. 2022 (Tallo); Pretzsch et al. 2015; McPherson et al. 2016 (USDA Urban Tree DB).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (31) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[18] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[19] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[21] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[22] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[23] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[25] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[26] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[28] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[29] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[30] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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