Yaupon Holly 'Pride of Houston'

Ilex vomitoria 'Pride of Houston' A cultivar of the native Yaupon Holly know for its more upright, dense, and compact growth habit.  Yaupon Holly is native to a variety of areas including sandy woods, dunes, open fields, forest edges and wet swamps. This is a thicket-forming, broadleaf evergreen shrub or small tree that typically grows upright. Often trimmed into hedges. Yaupon is slow-growing and tends to get thick and twiggy on the inside, making it ideal for dense hedges but requiring careful pruning to shape it into a tree. Small greenish-white flowers appear on male and female plants in spring. Flowers are fragrant but generally inconspicuous. Pollinated flowers on female plants give way to berry-like red (infrequently yellow) fruits (1/4” diameter) which ripen in fall and persist into winter. Female plants need a male pollinator in the area in order to bear fruit. The leaves of the Yaupon Holly can be used to make a caffeinated tea. The flavor resembles another holly drink, the S