The Holly and the Ilex

An explanation of the ILEX name and logo on the company's website explains how "Quercus ilex is the classical Latin name for the evergreen oak, a metaphor for strength and durability and for growth and development."

But fastidious contributors to an online debate on Derry City Council's UK City of Culture bid on political forum and blog Slugger O'Toole drew the Sentinel's attention to Quercus ilex as a denotation of the Holly or Holm Oak, which was originally found in Southern Europe and was only introduced here in the 16th century.

Furthermore the term Ilex - it transpires - is now more often used to botanically describe Holly although the festive flora stole the name from the Holm or Holly Oak in the first place. Quercus is the common term for the Oaks native to these shores.

The Sentinel asked the experts at the Northern Ireland Forest Service what it calls the acorn-yielding giants for which Londonderry is famed.

A spokesperson for the Forest Service referred us to the Native Woodland Definitions & Guidance (Northern Ireland Native Woodland Group 2008) - a guide published to inform and advise foresters, ecologists and conservationists with an interest in native trees and native woodlands.

The guide lists Quercus robur (the Pedunculate Oak) and Quercus petrae (the Sessile Oak) in a section outlining "naturally occurring" species which "includes those species that are known to have existed in a particular ecosystem or at a given location without the influence of humans."

The understorey species Ilex aquifolium (Holly) is also listed in the same section on native plants.

But the Forest Service also confirmed that Holly Oaks - thus named for their jagged leaves - can be found in Northern Ireland and do grow in our climate.

And the Sentinel has discovered Quercus Ilex was introduced to Ireland from the Mediterranean countries of Spain and Portugal in the 1500s after which it became a staple of large estate gardens.

Ilex, however, has also caught on in the popular imagination with Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney referring to it in his introduction to the Londonderry bid for the UK City of Culture 2013 as the classical name for Oak as opposed to Holm Oak.

"It is good to know that Derry City Council and Ilex are proposing 'the town we love so well' as the 2013 City of Culture," he wrote.

"It seems to me that the omens are encouraging, in that the 400th anniversary of the building of London's Derry could be read as a symbolic handover of cultural authority from London's 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

"And if the omens good, so too is the etymology: Doire is the oak, as is ilex, but another word for oak in Latin is robur, which is also the word for 'strength,'" he added.

Notwithstanding this endorsement from Londonderry's finest literary son the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) - a statutory adviser to the Government on UK and international nature conservation - believes that within the EU, old Sessile Oak woods with Holly (Ilex aquifolium) and hard-ferns are the naturally occurring norm in Britain and Ireland.

Banagher Glen is Londonderry is one such example described by JNCC as "one of the largest and least disturbed examples of old Sessile Oak woods in Northern Ireland."

"The site has a long history of continuous woodland cover, and has a well-developed structure with a range of different layers present.

"The naturalness of the wood is exemplified by the low number of non-native species and the relative abundance of old trees and epiphytes."