Holly

For the tea drinkers!

Feb 20, 2025

Please do your own research, I’m not responsible for what you eat.

To any newcomers, welcome. To returning readers, I will continue my tradition of looking at plant matter and wondering if it can be eaten (safely).

In the grim half-light of the British winter, my hungry stare turns from Common Ivy to English Holly, Ilex aquifolium. There are many medicinal features of Holly - I’m not here for that today, but here’s a quick spring board for your own research.

For the leaves:

diaphoretic - triggering excess sweating
febrifuge - reducing fever
expectorant - helps to clear out the mucus from your upper respiratory tract

For the berries:

violently emetic - triggering extreme vomiting
purgative - a laxative effect

“So what are you up to this time?”, I hear you cry.

This time, I’m staying away from the berries (unlike Ivy) and I’ll show you what I uncovered about holly leaves as a black tea substitute. That’s right, a substitute for Camellia sinensis - the leaf that is wrapped around the heart of many a Brit.

More than explain how holly leaves can be used for tea, I want to share with you the journey I took to find this information. Rarely does tracing the edible use of a plant work me this hard but I think the journey itself is exciting (for me, and hopefully for some of you too!)

I didn’t set out to look for yet another tea substitute (unlike the first time). I was originally looking for any consumption of Ilex aquifolium and I was beginning to despair until a throwaway line in a book.

If you use your favourite search engine and bang in something like “consumption of holly” you’ll likely throw up plenty of results about Yaupon Holly which has the unfortunate Latin name Ilex vomitoria. It, along with Ilex cassine are the only two caffeine containing plants in North America. Nowadays, you can buy the roasted/dried leaves of I. vomitoria and I. cassine in a popular american supermarket chain.

Of course, this is the easy way out.

A less common yellow fruited cultivar of Ilex aquifolium. I’ve also seen orange fruit and possibly black.

Down the Holly hole

The throwaway line I’m referring to appears in a popular book by Margaret Grieve from 1931 entitled “A Modern Herbal”. It’s still popular now, you can buy reprints easily.

“The leaves of Holly have been employed in the Black Forest as a substitute for tea.”

I needed to know more. I probably spent a literal half day’s worth of research hours looking up this obscure reference.

Until, finally, I happened across a German book that preceded Margaret Grieve’s work by a healthy 86 years - “Plant Intoxicants: Classic Text on the Use of Mind-Altering Plants” by Ernst von Bibra (1855).

“Regarding the second species, Ilex aquifolium L., Hugo von Mohl reports that in the Black Forest this species is dried and its dried leaves used in making tea. Similar to preparing Chinese tea, an infusion is prepared by pouring boiling water on the dried leaves. Unable to obtain dried leaves, Mohl made his test by boiling fresh leaves. He liked this brew and preferred it to Paraguayan tea. Mohl believes it would be worthwhile to experiment with the roasted leaves of the Black Forest holly to find out whether these might not supply an even better product. He was not able to establish whether the use of this tea dates back to earlier times, or whether it was only recently introduced.

Hugo von Mohl turns out to be a German botanist who moved in the same circles as Ernst von Bibra (also a German botanist). Paraguayan tea is a tea made from Ilex paraguariensis. It is more commonly known as Yerba mate and is consumed with gusto in many South american countries. It, too, contains caffeine.

So who exactly told Hugo von Mohl about this German Black Forest tradition of brewing dried I. aquifolium?

English searches were in vain by this point and I resorted to German key words. Luckily for me, the German for “tea” is simply “tee”. Eventually, I found my way to a German publication called “Botanische Zeitung” which means “Botanical Journal”. I’ll quote a translated excerpt from the Hugo von Mohl himself:

When I spent some time in the Black Forest last autumn, I heard to my surprise that the sun-dried leaves of the holly, which grows frequently there, are often used instead of Chinese tea. As there was no supply of these leaves in the place where I was staying, I collected fresh leaves to make a test. These, however, had to be boiled rather than just infused like dried leaves. Although I am a tea drinker and a staunch enemy of anything that is called a substitute, I found that this holly tea was not to be despised at all and I would certainly give it preference over the maté tea that I have had the opportunity to taste so far. Under these circumstances, it would be worth the effort to carry out experiments to see whether roasting, as is done to the leaves of Ilex paraguayensis when preparing maté tea, or by specially selecting the leaves of Il. Aquifolium, etc., a really valuable product could be obtained. I have not been able to find out whether the use of holly leaves in the Black Forest is an old custom, or whether it was introduced recently, since information about maté tea has been available.”

Here, the trail dries up much like he claims holly tea needs to be dried before infusion. Where was he staying? Who told him? We probably will never know.

The information we have gathered so far seems to indicate that some people in the mid 19th century used to drink an infusion of dried Ilex aquifolium leaves as a tea. At least one guy prefers the boiled leaves to the popular maté tea (I. paraguariensis).

Down another Holly hole

Let me rephrase our story so far:

A famous botanist, staying at an unnamed place in the Black Forest heard from some person that the locals drink dried Holly leaves as tea, but unfortunately they didn’t have any at hand and some fresh leaves were boiled as a substitute.

Not the best evidence I’m afraid.

As you might have guessed, I didn’t give up here.

The search phrase that did the trick was something along the lines of “holly tea” - not “ethnobotany ilex aquifolium”, and the location was Google Books - not Google Scholar. I was relying too much on academia!

A delightful back and forth that could belong on any modern day internet forum presented itself in the pages of the “The Gardeners' Chronicle: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Horticulture and Allied Subjects”. My gut feeling is that the author of “A Modern Herbal” was a regular reader of this. The most passionate proponent of Holly tea in “The Gardener’s Chronicle” is undoubtedly the Victorian gardener, Alexander Forsyth. He believes that producing an native English tea will cure all manner of addictions and stop the dependence on the new and alluring Chinese tea imports. There’s a very emotive and religious angle to his writing - someone who really believes what he is writing (October 15th, 1859):

Try it with a will and no prejudice, convinced that better men women too than we are have used it during the term their natural lives, and blessed God for bestowing upon them. I might say a great deal more the plant, its cultivation propagation, and the like but my brothers of the gardening trade, and particularly the nurserymen, are in no need of my advice this head and I commend it to their interest to the good work. To the landed proprietor I would of him to plant Hollies of all sorts for their beauty, and for God's sake to benefit the poor to whom the Holly will one day prove an inestimable blessing.

Heady reading indeed.

Not all his countrymen are on his side, however. A week later, the editors of the “The Gardener’s Chronicle” are out to get him (October 22nd, 1859):

Another point that should not be overlooked that this question is the effect of the Maté or Paraguay Holly on the system. Mr Forsyth trusts that English Holly will put end to the use an intoxicating beverages among the poor. Nothing can be more laudable than attempts to diminish the chances of men getting drunk or even tippling. But what if the Holly Tea of Paraguay is only Opium in disguise? and what if the English Holly should also be its likeness. In Hooker's Journal of Botany Vol I., where there is a very full account of Paraguay Holly Tea up from the most authentic sources there is the following rather important announcement:- “To individuals who accustom themselves to it the habit (of drinking Maté) becomes second nature and to break it off or even diminish the customary quantity is almost impossible. Like Opium it certainly appears to rouse the torpid and calm the restless; but as in the case of that noxious drug, the immoderate use is apt to occasion diseases”

Someone better tell the millions of Mate tea drinkers that it’s as dangerous and addictive as opium!

Other readers weigh in on their experiences with holly tea (more favourable to Foryth’s view) and I must re-iterate how delightful I found these exchanges. It’s just like an internet forum minus emojis.

I managed to locate a very detailed account of preparing Holly Tea in an academic journal by the same William Forsyth from 1852 in “The Journal of the Horticultural Society of London”. He based his letter in the “Gardener’s Chronicle” on this article. If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll notice his account precedes Hugo von Mohl’s by three years. He doesn’t name drop the German botanist’s name either but rather reasons that Ilex aquifolium might be drunk as tea because other Holly species are:

[…] I had good reasons for suspecting that Ilex aquifolium possessed drinkable qualities, and in order to confirm them, I closely examined Ilex Dahoon [casseine], comparing it with various varieties of Ilex aquifolium, and […] they were very much alike. I then manufactured some of the leaves of the common Holly, after the Paraguay fashion, and found that well-roasted Holly leaves are quite as good as five-shilling tea. Paraguay tea is almost charred and then pounded to a coarse powder, and the prickles upon our Holly leaves look as if they had been made on purpose to prop the leaf in roasting, for the hot air gets through the mass of leaves without sweating them or requiring them to be turned or tossed as Chinese teas are. The smell is very disagreeable during the process of roasting, but not so when the leaves are dried enough for use, and such is precisely the case with Coffee, whose fumes, when roasting, are anything but pleasant. Paraguay tea is drank with a little lime-juice and sugar, and sucked from the tea-pot (Mate) through a wooden tube (Bambilla); but I used milk and sugar, after the English fashion, and drank it out of a tea-cup, and children, who may surely be considered unbiassed judges, drank it freely.

He even went so far as testing Holly tea on children.

So our work has been done for us:

Roast Holly leaves on a tray in an oven without turning until almost charred
Pound the roasted leaves into a coarse powder
Use as normal Camellia sinensis tea leaves

Breeding Aside

As always, I have an eye towards plant breeding and there is evidence out there that species in the Ilex family are very promiscuous - I’m talking crosses between evergreen and non-evergreen tribes. I. paraguariensis (from which the popular caffienated Yerba mate is derived) contains caffeine. It’s a small, evergreen tree that can exist roughly between USDA zone’s 8 and 10. Ilex cassine, another evergreen tree also produces caffiene. In fact, a hybid of I. cassine with I. opaca that exceeds the vigour of the parents already exists. Are there any any enterprising volunteers with a green house? It wouldn’t take much to overlap flowering times with I. aquifolium, plus hollies tend to produce male or female plants so you don’t need to emasculate.

To be complete, the four species of holly that are meant to contain caffiene are I. paraguarienesis, I. cassine, I. vomitoria and possibly I. tarapotina.

There needs to be more research into the health effects of drinking I. aquifolium tea but I’ve seen mention here and there that Chinese medicine utilises it. At the very least, Ilex chinesis is part of the 50 fundamental herbs in Chinese herbology. As an interesting aside: that list also contains Camellia sinensis. European folklore contains many references to holly as a medicine but not as a drink (which is how we fell down this rabbit hole in the first place). So we have a long established tradition of human experiments (if you’d allow the term) to systematise.

You could be the person who single-handedly starts an evergreen cold temperate caffienated tea plant revolution. No more international tea imports, baby.

Final Thoughts

After all the rooting and burrowing around, I found two (probably) independent sources on the drinking of roasted/dried Ilex aquifolium leaves from the mid 19th century, and then not much else. I have a holly bush right outside my living room window and I’m probably going to try roasting some leaves when I get some time.

If anyone knows anything about the drinking of Holly Tea in the German Black Forest, please shout out.

I really am serious about breeding I. aquifolium with a caffiene bearing holly (I. paraguarienesis, I. cassine, I. vomitoria and possibly I. tarapotina). Just imagine how revolutionary an evergreen cold tolerant caffeinated plant could be.

And finally, regardless of your religious leanings, Alexander Forsyth truly has a way with words. I want to leave you with a snippet that could straight from a substack article:

What will tea-drinkers, confirmed tippling tea-drinkers, say to this? The very tea itself becomes cheap at last, and abundant, even growing in the garden hedge. A forest of tea-trees in full leaf at our doors! Such a harvest has never before been seen; waste not the Holly any more upon whip-handles, peel it not for Birdlime as formerly, squander it not even at Christmas, but reap it, roast it, and drink it again and again, for the store will be annually renewed and the future foliage will furnish finer tea leaves than those just gathered.

Until next time.

Urban Food Forest

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