Holm oak

Value to bees

Nectar

None

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Bees collect honeydew directly from the leaf surfaces and bark rather than from any flower, so there is no pollination relationship at all — this is harvesting an insect by-product from a tree that neither needs nor rewards them.

Worth knowing

A pollen source in spring and, in the right years, a substantial honeydew source from midsummer onwards. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Flowering

In flower

April to May (northern hemisphere)

Wind-pollinated catkins. The flowering is close to irrelevant to bees; the honeydew flow months later is what matters.

When nectar flows

None. Oaks secrete no floral nectar of consequence, and the sugar bees collect from them comes from aphids and scale insects on the foliage.

Year-to-year variation

The honeydew flow depends entirely on insect population cycles, which boom and collapse for reasons largely invisible from the ground. A good encina year cannot be planned for.

What it does to the honey

Produces a very dark, low-sweetness honeydew honey with malt, liquorice and a distinct saline mineral depth.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on any well-drained soil, including thin limestone. Extremely drought-tolerant once established and tolerant of salt wind.

Size

15-25 m, and very long-lived.

Native range

The western and central Mediterranean basin — Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, north Africa — where it forms both closed woodland and the open grazed dehesa and montado systems.

Suits

Large gardens

• A very large long-term tree and not a garden plant in any ordinary sense.
• It casts dense year-round shade, and little grows beneath an established one.

What it looks like

A dense, dark, round-headed evergreen with small leathery leaves, grey-white and felted beneath, variable enough in shape that young growth can look almost holly-like. Catkins in spring, acorns in autumn.