Sherry Chandler » Okay, I’ve got one.
Okay, I’ve got one.
This isn’t a lovely little wildflower, such as Charlie sends, but a flowering bush that grows on the north side of our house. I cut it back severely every year but that just seems to encourage it to grow. It’s really quite ugly but it has a very delicate and sweet flower, as you can see:
All these years, I’ve not known what it is. But one of you all do, I’m sure.
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5 Comments
1. Charles W. replies at 26th May 2007, 1:18 pm :
This doesn’t match any of the entries in my books very well. The thin stems and opposite leaves give it a honeysuckle look. Also the snow-white flower, has a sort of honeysuckle look. It’s pretty.
But sorry, I don’t actually know what it is.
2. sherry replies at 26th May 2007, 3:26 pm :
Agreed, Charlie. It also looks a little bit like mock orange except for the flowers.
3. Rebecca Clayton replies at 28th May 2007, 9:40 am :
Well, the family is Caprifoliaceae, for sure, and I think it’s Lonicera, the honeysuckle genus, but beyond that, all I can say is, I’ve seen it around. My field guides and “Flora of West Virginia” all weasel around on species identification. Bailey’s “Manual of Cultivated Plants” tells me there are 180 species of honeysuckle in the Northern Hemisphere, and hybridization occurs. Best to say, “Honeysuckle” and leave it at that.
4. sherry replies at 28th May 2007, 9:47 am :
How interesting, Rebecca — and Charlie. No wonder it’s so unkillable. The flowers are exquisite but I just can’t make a “pretty” bush out of it.
That makes three varieties of honeysuckle in this yard — the other two being what I consider the ordinary honeysuckle vine that grows in fence rows around here and the other being that awful invasivenon-native bush honeysuckle that we can’t irradicate.
5. sherry replies at 8th June 2007, 11:05 am :
Hey Rebecca & Charlie — I am here at West Chester Univ, where the workshops are two blocks away from the dorm and cafeteria. But I was shown a shortcut today, through a residential area with no sidewalks but lots of neat houses and huge old poplars and maples, etc. Hedges of flowering bay laurel, smelling like heaven, and then one of these bushes, freestanding and obviously old, higher than my head and as big around as a water tower. It was in full bloom and just gorgeous.
I was tempted to go knock on the door and ask what it was.
Let grow like that, it looks a lot like bush honeysuckle or again a bit like the mock orange — though not as withy as the latter.
I see now that the initial error somebody made many years ago was in planting this bush up against the house. It needs control but also space. I’m sure TR will not be happy at my thought that we ought to dig it up and move it out into mid-yard someplace. I think we would be rewarded for doing so.
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