Aquifoliaceae is a small plant family with two genera, by far the best-known being Ilex, the hollies, a large genus with about 600 species distributed nearly world-wide, absent only from Australasia and western North America. They are shrubs and small trees, including both evergreen and deciduous species. Many of them are highly decorative.
The other genus, Nemopanthus , only contains one species, Nemopanthus mucronatus, which differs from Ilex in the flowers having a reduced calyx and narrow petals, and also in cytology, being tetraploid, whereas Ilex is diploid.
American holly
foliage and berries
