GDNG - Honeysuckle

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In focus: honeysuckle
(Filed: 02/06/2001)

By day, the perfume is elusive. At dusk and dawn it floods out, says Sarah Raven

HONEYSUCKLE smells as good as it does because it's not entirely sweet. There's a slight catch to its scent, as if the honey had been mixed with something from an Eastern bazaar, a sprinkle of frankincense, a myrrhiness overlaying the rest.

Lonicera x americana is a deciduous hybrid with a clove scent and yellow suffused with pink

That exoticism is helped by the scent pouring out most strongly in the early morning and evening, part of an extraordinary adaptation that encourages moths to pollinate the flowers. Like lilies, tobacco plants and daturas, honeysuckle has tubular or trumpet-shaped flowers, ideal for the moth's long proboscis. By day, the perfume is elusive. At dusk and dawn, when the moths are about, the scent floods out. Could this be a photosensitive mechanism, with scent-making cells responding to low levels of light? The Kent-based fragrance manufacturer Quest International found that with Lonicera japonica in particular, its main scent pulse is always between 2am and 3am, when in Japan, perhaps, the moths are around.

There's no easier way to fill your garden with scent than by packing in a few of these vigorous climbers. They tolerate nearly all conditions and flower for months with little attention needed. With two or three varieties, you'll have heady honeysuckle evenings from May to October.

Start with the deciduous L. caprifolium, guaranteed to be in bloom by the middle of May. The flowers are creamy white when they first open, deepening to the palest apricot and then flushed pink as they age. It climbs to 10ft (3m). Follow this with L. x italica, often called L. x americana in garden centres. This is a superb deciduous hybrid with a powerful clove scent. The flowers are yellow, suffused with a rich, deep pink. It can grow to almost twice the height of L. caprifolium.

L. periclymenum `Belgica' overlaps in its season with L. x italica and is of a similar colour and height - 20-30ft (6-9m). With broad, deep-green leaves, this is ideal if you want a honeysuckle romping up through any small- to medium-size tree.

People often worry that, like ivy, vigorous honeysuckles will harm a building or tree. They can strangle a spindly branch but, as long as the host is well-established, honeysuckles will do no harm. They don't have ivy's aerial roots and can be contained by pruning.

The final one to come into its own is my favourite, L. periclymenum `Serotina'. This has almost crimson-pink buds, mixed with golden cream as the trumpets open. It has a more compact growth than `Belgica', reaching 15-20ft (4-6m), so you can train it over a frame or door.

I have one beneath my window and for two to three months in late summer and autumn, my room is filled with its scent as I go to bed.

Two others deserve mention. If you have limited space, try a hybrid called `Sweet Sue'. This summer-flowering variety with creamy-yellow flowers is named after Roy Lancaster's wife and is not as vigorous as the rest. It will climb to 10-12ft (2.5-3m).

Loniceras are usually planted in cooler parts of the garden, leaning against a north-facing wall, or scrambling up in the shade of a tree. But if you have a hot spot that also needs a climber, then grow L. etrusca, which thrives in the sun and reaches 12ft (3.5m). It flowers from July and August, but you'll have flowers before and after then. It has excellent resistance to aphids, too.

Honeysuckles are unfussy plants, thriving in almost any soil. The ideal way to grow them is with their roots kept cool - as you'd get beneath a tree - while their tops scramble up to the sun. The roots like moisture and organic material. Give them a deep compost mulch in spring and autumn.

Most honeysuckles are best left to clamber, but early flowering varieties, such as L. caprifolium, benefit from a prune after flowering. I do mine in mid-summer. They can get black spot, so when you prune, shorten the stems by a third. They will then produce new healthy foliage.

Aphids can be a problem. In May and early June, greenfly can plaster the new shoots and flowering stems, but try not to spray because the aphids move off by the end of June. They are attracted to the sweet, juicy tips, but not when the rapid late-spring growth slows. If you want to spray, use soap and water or the same fungicide and insecticide mix as on your roses.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

Answers

I have 3 spaced around the courtyard, and drivway......m-m-m-m-m- sweet aroma

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

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