Sir Doug of the Hollies and fellow ENTS,

Doug's outstanding post on American Hollies has got me thinking about finding large outstanding specimens of evergreen holly, American and otherwise. I remembered seeing a couple of larger Am holly at Calvary Episcopal Church in Fletcher NC. The church/cemetery grounds has quite a collection of nice trees. I measured 4 holly trees there today. One turned out to be 62 feet tall, being the tallest I have measured to date barely edging out a 60 foot forest tree I found on Kings Mountain just outside of Dana NC. I await Congaree's giant hollies and also would like to search the smokies for big hollies.

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/north_carolina/calvary_ch...

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/north_carolina/calvary_ch...

http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/383c1df...

Here are the measurements for the American Hollies at Calvary Episcopal Church.

4' cbh             42.3 feet tall    Beautiful tree!
4' cbh             62.0 feet tall !  Near two nice oriental spruce.
6' 7 1/2" cbh    57.2 feet tall   Double-Trunked
4' 2" cbh         37.4 feet tall   Bushy

I also measured a white pine at 9 ft in girth and 104.2' tall which probably makes it the tallest tree at Calvary.

Mentioning Holly, here is an organization which centers on the Ilex group of trees.

http://www.hollysocam.org/

James Parton