Skills and main features

Discovered about 15 years ago by Tranquillo Matteini among the oaks of our nursery, the Quercus Ilex Matteini is now one of our leading products. Unique in its kind, it’s our patented plant.

Elegant leaf

Compact habit

Cold resistance

Resistance to plant diseases

Its leaf is larger than one of a traditional quercus ilex and its growth is more compact.

This kind of holm is more resistant to cold  than traditional quercus ilex.
It’s more resistant to plant phitopatogies.

In conclusion, the Quercus ilex Matteini is more elegant, with a more compact growth and a better resistance to cold weathers and plant diseases.

Quercus ilex is an evergreen Mediterranean plant. It has a long life and over the years it becomes monumental.

Its growth is slow and not without problems (temperatures below -15°C could even damage the mature plants). Young plants have rustic and spiny leaves in order to guard against snails and herbivores. However, growing up the its leaf becomes large and elegant.
The branches become more flexible and hanging. Centenary oaks beautify gardens and parks and they, along  with cypress, make unique Tuscan landscapes.

Tranquillo Matteini has always cultivated the holms, and he realized that naturally the holly oak in cultivation differs from the others: some of them have a more upright shape, others have a more narrow or thorny leaf. Basically the genetic heritage provided by Mother Nature makes every single plant unique in its genre.

About 15 years ago Tranquillo Matteini noticed in our nursery a particular plant that was different from the other ones. Its growth was more compact. Its leaf was certainly thicker and larger, with a silver colour on the lower side and dark green on the upper surface. The leaf was clean (a symptom of a greater resistance to phylloxera). From this observation  Tranquillo Matteini got the idea to reproduce this kind of plant grafting it on the traditional holm.

Easily the small grafts  passed unscathed the snowfall of December 17, 2009 that brought temperatures in the plains of Pistoia to -13 °, showing another skill of this new cultivar: the cold resistance.

The plant-mother of the “Quercus ilex Matteini” has been transplanted into a corner of the nursery and it’s visited by experts of green, garden designers, landscapers and green architects interested in seeing a new variety of Quercus ilex more elegant, with a more compact growth and a better resistance to cold weathers and plant diseases.

Currently we are producing it in different shapes: branched or clear stem, in pot and rootball.