Ilex opacaAiton

American holly

WFO wfo-0000729683 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ilex opaca, photographed by Mila C.
fig. a Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203277188
Ilex opaca, photographed by Matthew Gerke
fig. b Matthew Gerke, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201727730
Ilex opaca, photographed by Mark Apgar
fig. c Mark Apgar, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201589678
Ilex opaca, photographed by David Ratledge
fig. d David Ratledge, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201852030
Ilex opaca, photographed by Nathan T. Jones
fig. e Nathan T. Jones, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204267360
Ilex opaca, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. f Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 200623506
Ilex opaca, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. g Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 200349061
Ilex opaca, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. h Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200391374

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 553 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 553 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 23 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Ageria opaca (Aiton) Raf.
  • Ilex americana Lam.
  • Ilex arenicola Ashe
  • Ilex arenicola var. obovata McFarlin
  • Ilex arenicola var. paucidens McFarlin
  • Ilex canadensis Michx.
  • Ilex cumulicola Small
  • Ilex laxiflora Lam.
  • Ilex opaca f. opaca
  • Ilex opaca f. subintegra Weath.
  • Ilex opaca f. xanthocarpa Rehder
  • Ilex opaca var. acuminata Raf.
  • Ilex opaca var. arenicola (Ashe) Ashe
  • Ilex opaca var. floribunda Demcker
  • Ilex opaca var. globosa Raf.
  • Ilex opaca var. integra Alph.Wood
  • Ilex opaca var. latifolia Raf.
  • Ilex opaca var. laxiflora (Lam.) Nutt.
  • Ilex opaca var. macrodon Raf.
  • Ilex opaca var. opaca
  • Ilex opaca var. subintegra (Weath.) Rehder
  • Ilex pygmaea McFarlin
  • Ilex quercifolia Meerb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.