The plants we bring inside at Christmas are surprisingly tough. Holly is spiky, ivy is rampantly dominating. mistletoe is so rubbery that you can sometimes doubt that it is a living plant.
There are gentler wildflowers out there, still – Old-man’s beard is hanging on, and seedheads of Hogweed and Fennel sit elegantly at the roadside. But it’s the leathery evergreens that we are drawn to.
I think our love of these plants is rooted in survival. This is a brutal time of year – not the season for delicacies or gentleness. Nearly everything is exhausted or absent. Grass in pastures looks ill, and the floor of woods is covered in death, as rotting leaves and decaying bracken slide gradually back into the soil. Holly, ivy and mistletoe, meanwhile, are still thriving. Their use is steeped in pagan traditions, but I think there’s a Christian resonance here too, in the idea of life enduring, whatever happens.
Nowadays people like to dress them, and make them sparkly or silvery or truss them up with ribbon, so you lose sight of the plants themselves. I disagree. I love them for their no-nonsense robustness. I’ve often made beautiful wreaths with nothing else. They make an excellent trinity: the dark gloss of the holly, the lizardy ivy and the pearls of the mistletoe complement each other brilliantly.
If you really want to go to town, you could make some swags mixing them up together, looping them around a room at cornice level. With candles and a laden Christmas tree, they will give a room an elegant dignity.
Or you could make an arrangement in a big vase, with proper boughs of holly. In many woods the plant is a pest, so you can use it with abandon. Then twine ivy in and out of its branches - most people will thank you for removing it from their trees - and scatter it with little clumps of mistletoe.
Here, in an edited extract from my new book, is the full guide to these winter queens of our native wild flowers.
Holly Ilex aquifolium
In some years holly is noticeably more berried than others; these are the winters that follow good long summers, with sun and plenty of rain, in which holly bushes flower for longer than usual. Thrushes, fieldfares and redwings love its berries. Its leaves and flower buds are one of the main larval foods of the holly blue butterfly.
The foliage also provides good nesting sites for birds, and cover for young oak trees. Its prickly leaves protect the seedling, keeping grazing deer and rabbits at bay.
Holly seedlings are also susceptible to browsing, but once the plant is a year or so old, it forms the spiny leaves that protect it. As the plant matures, the leaves near the top often become unspiny again, as they grow beyond the reach of grazing animals.
Plant type Holly family, Aquifoliaceae. Flowers May-August; fruits in winter. Height 3m-15m (10ft-50ft).
Description Dioecious, small, slow-growing evergreen tree or large shrub, with smooth bark. Leaves are wavy, spiny-edged, dark glossy green, leathery and arranged alternately. Flowers are 5mm-7mm across with four white petals, arranged in clusters.
Companion species Enchanter’s nightshade, hart’s tongue, male fern and oak.
Distribution Native. Holly is our commonest native evergreen, absent only from the most remote parts of the Scottish Highlands.
Habitat Abundant in oak and beech woodlands on acidic soils, where it often forms a shrub layer. It is characteristic of grazed wood pasture in places such as the New Forest.
Mistletoe Viscum album
You can spot mistletoe in poplars, limes and willows, as well as hawthorns and craggy fruit trees. From a distance you can only see the berries, scattered over what look like nests. The plant is usually spaced evenly through the tree, growing out of the bark.
The berries look like dull pearls or white currants, blue-white rather than creamy green. If you squeeze one you cannot drop it – they are as tacky as chewing gum. This is how it spreads: after eating the sticky berries, birds wipe their beaks on tree branches, depositing the seeds.
Plant type Bastard-toadflax family, Santalaceae.
Flowers February-April; fruits November-December.
Height Forms clumps up to 1m (3ft) across.
Description Dioecious, woody, hemiparasitic shrub. Stems are repeatedly branched with pairs of yellow-green, narrow-elliptical, leathery leaves. Flowers are very small, four-petalled, in a compact green-white, three to five-flowered inflorescence. Fruit is 6mm-10mm across.
Companion species Crab apple, hawthorn and goat willow. Contrary to the legend, it is rarely found on oak.
Distribution Native. It is mostly confined to England and Wales, most frequent in south-east England and the West Midlands. It has been increasing during the past 20 years, despite the heavy harvest at Christmas. Habitat Hemiparasitic on a variety of trees in orchards, parkland, hedgerows and gardens.
Common ivy Hedera helix
This is an excellent wildlife plant, because its autumn flowers are a key food source for hoverflies, butterflies and, most of all, bees. There is not a lot of food for these insects later in the year: the University of Sussex has found that our bees fly farther to forage in July, August and September because there are many fewer flowers around.
In the spring, ivy is also a food plant for the holly blue butterfly, the only blue found in urban gardens. The foliage also provides cover for nesting birds and mammals.
Plant type Ivy family, Araliaceae.
Flowers August-November.
Height Climbs to 30m (98ft).
Description Evergreen, woody, perennial climber. It may also form carpets on the ground. Stems have adhesive roots and downy young twigs. Leaves (4cm-10cm long) are glossy, dark green and hairless, with undersides covered in whitish hairs. Leaves on non-flowering shoots are palmate with three to five triangular lobes, while those on flowering shoots are elliptical and unlobed. Flowers are borne in umbels and each flower has five yellow-green petals.
Companion species Bramble, dog-rose, field-rose and honeysuckle.
Distribution Native. Very common except in the most remote parts of the Scottish Highlands and Outer Hebrides. It is becoming very common in woodlands – probably because of increased organic matter and decreased management – where it tends to smother ground flora.
Habitat Hedgerows, woodland, scrub, rocky outcrops, cliffs and walls.
- Wild Flowers by Sarah Raven (Bloomsbury, £50), is available from Telegraph Books for £45 plus £1.25 p&p. To order, call 0844 871 1515 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk