Ilex x meserveae 'Mondo' LITTLE RASCAL® blue holly, Meserve holly - male

Little Rascal® is a beautiful new variety of blue holly, found in US nursery Monrovia in 1996 as a natural mutation of another blue holly called Blue Boy. The plant exhibits unique features, distinctly different from its parent for which it was patented under PP9,999 as ilex x “Mondo”.

Little Rascal® is a compact and slow growing variety of blue holly. It bears plentiful of approx. 3 cm long leaves that are evergreen, undulated, richly serrated at margins but not thorny, mid green with coppery red hues. Plant with freshly emerged or just about maturing leaves looks like artificial thanks to its super-glossy foliage. Twigs are burgundy red or reddish-brown. It is a male variety that serves all blue hollies and most of other female hollies as a good pollinator.

Meserveae hollies are called “blue hollies” thanks to the shade of the species leaves that are dark green with bluish tint. And the name meserveae was chosen for its cultivator, Kathleen Meserve, who, literally on her windowsill, made a cross of ilex rugosa and ilex aquifolium in 1950´s to achieve excellent cold hardiness on a fabulously foliaged evergreen plant. She died in 1999 at the age of 93 but left behind an impressive line of these evergreen superbly hardy varieties.

It makes a dense bush that needs no or very little pruning and practically no care. Just provide it with slightly acid soil when transplanting and enough moisture for the first couple of years to enable establishing extensive root system. LiLittle Rascal® is a beautiful and trouble-free low shrub with no defoliated twigs even without pruning. Still, you can shape it in any way from early spring till midsummer. Another huge advantage is its hardiness. It can stand very low temperatures without any damage: Little Rascal® is rated hardy to USDA 4 (-34°C) by its inventor, and is suitable for growing in large outdoor containers and troughs.

Last update 08-03-2012