Yaupon Holly is native to the coastal plains of the Southeastern USA. A popular residential landscape tree, this holly is an evergreen shrub to small tree that can attain heights to 25'. It has stiff, dense branches and small, glossy green elliptical shaped leaves. This shrub bears small white flowers during the spring months and the beautiful red berries appear from fall and throughout the winter. The leaves contain caffeine and although I've never tried it the young leaves can be steeped/brewed to make Yaupon tea, which is said to be quite delicious.

Birds enjoy the berries of the Yaupon Holly but these fruits are toxic to mammals. The berries contain Saponins which can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

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Yaupon Holly usually is a small tree but can be a large shrub, that can ground sucker to form a thickets. It grows medium to fast of 1 to 3 feet/year. Its native range is from southeast Virginia to central Florida along the Atlantic coastal plain and west to eastern Texas along the Gulf plain, plus southeast Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, growing in both very dry to very wet acid soils. The evergreen leaves are 1/2 to 1.5 inches long and to 3/4 inches wide with rounded, shallowly toothed margins. The small flowers have 4 white petals in auxillary clusters on year old wood; the male flowers are numerous together while the female flowers are solitary or in pairs, plus having a green pistil in the center, and bloom in April. The translucent scarlet drupes (berries) are borne in big quantities and last from late summer to early spring. The species scientific name of "vomitoria" comes from the use of the leaves used to brew a tea by Native Americans that after drinking would induce vomiting to purge the digestive system. There is a good number of cultivars and this species is used commonly in southern landscapes.

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Yaupon Holly is a dioecious plant, meaning individual plants are either male or female. Only the female plant will have berries.

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