Bill Cannon hopes the baggage checkers on his next flight home won't open his suitcase. No, he's not carrying contraband. The horticulturist would just prefer not to explain the presence of dozens of holly cuttings swaddled in newsprint.

When Mr. Cannon travels to holly meetings, growers press him to try their newest varieties. As his reputation has grown, so has the need for suitcases, much to his wife's chagrin. "I try to clean them out as well as I can," he says.

To visit Cannon's property in Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod, is to witness a decades-long "addiction" to hollies, some of which were grown by Cannon's father and grandfather. On a one-acre lot that includes the house, Cannon grows 260 different varieties of holly, from 50-foot trees to the tiny 'Rock Garden' hybrid, which is less than 12 inches tall.

His claim to fame: cultivating varieties that by rights shouldn't grow this far north. By a trick of climate, Cape Cod winters are usually warmer than in the rest of the region. So Cannon likes to push the envelope. He is raising the unappealingly named Ilex vomitoria (Yaupon holly), which generally lives in regions where temperatures rarely fall below zero.

Few people can resist his enthusiasm for holly. As he shows a group of slicker-clad garden-club ladies around the yard on this drizzly, cold day, he speaks rapturously of glossy leaves, shiny berries, and conical shapes. He knows each holly by name, and touches the branches as if greeting dear friends.

The ladies are agog at his knowledge - and his stories. They laugh when he tells of a Southern gentle- man who spoke of the spiky virtues of the Chinese holly 'Berries Jubilee,' humorously explaining, "Around here, that's what we plant under our teenage daughters' windows."

If the genus Ilex ever needed a goodwill ambassador, Cannon would be the man. "Most people know only two or three types of holly that they see at Christmas," he says. "They don't know how hard growers are working to expand the range of hollies" available to home gardeners. Hybridizers are looking for plants with darker green, shiny leaves; greater resistance to insects and diseases; a more compact shape that needs little pruning; and plants that bear fruit at a younger age.

Right now, at least 500 varieties of American holly are in commercial production in the United States. And that doesn't begin to measure the plant's scope: Gardeners enjoy Japanese holly, Chinese holly, English holly, deciduous types, and many more. They're also looking for exotic varieties, including those with variegated leaves or orange berries.

Specialty nurseries are struggling to keep pace, but in local garden centers, it's rare to find more than eight or 10 types of holly.

That is, unless you live in the mid-Atlantic, "a hotbed of holly enthusiasts," according to Cannon. Other areas where hollies are very popular include Tennessee and Georgia, and France, England, Australia, and Korea.

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