HONEYSUCKLE, botanical name Lonicera, a genus of climbing, erect or prostrate shrubs, of the family Caprifoliaceae, so named of ter the 16th-century German botanist Adam Lonicer. The common British species is L. Periclymenum, the woodbine: L. Capri f olium and L. X ylosteum are found in a few counties in the south and east of England. Some of the garden varieties of the woodbine are very beautiful, and are held in high esteem for their delicious fragrance, even the wild plant, with its pale flowers, compensating for its sickly looks "with never-cloying odours." The North American sub-evergreen L. sempervirens, with its fine heads of blossoms, commonly called the trumpet honeysuckle, the most handsome of all the cultivated honeysuckles, is a distinct and beautiful species producing both scarlet and yellow flowered varieties, and the Japanese L. flexuosa var. aureoreticulata is esteemed for its charmingly variegated leaves netted with golden yellow. The fly honeysuckle, L. Xylosteum, a hardy shrub of dwarfish, erect habit and L. tatarica, of similar habit, both Euro pean, are amongst the oldest English garden shrubs, and bear axillary flowers of various colours, occurring two on a peduncle. There are numerous other species, many of them introduced to our gardens, and well worth cultivating in shrubberies or as climbers on walls and bowers, either for their beauty or the fragrance of their blossoms.
The wood of the fly honeysuckle is extremely hard and is em ployed to make teeth for rakes ; and, like that of L. tatarica, it is a favourite material for walking-sticks.
There are about 175 species, widely distributed in the northern hemisphere, upwards of 3o of which, together with numerous varieties, are more or less culti vated. Some 25 species, inclusive of several naturalized from the Old World, are found in the United States and Canada. Hon eysuckles (Lonicera) flourish in any ordinary garden soil. Pruning should be done about March, cut ting out some of the old wood, and shortening back some of the younger growths of the preceding year.
In the western counties of England the name honeysuckle is applied to the meadow clover, Tri f opum pratense. Another plant of the same family (Legum inosae), Hedysarum coronar mum, a very handsome hardy biennial, is called the French honeysuckle. The name is more over applied with various affixes to several other totally different plants. Thus white honeysuckle and false honeysuckle are names for the North American Azalea viscosa; Australian or heath honeysuckle is the Australian Banksia serrata; Jamaica honeysuckle, Passi flora lauri f olia; dwarf honeysuckle, the widely spread Cornus suecica; Virgin Mary's honeysuckle, the European Pulmonaria officinalis; while West Indian honeysuckle is Tecoma capensis, and is also a name applied to Desmodium.