102 CAPRIFOLIACE^ 



The Honeysuckle is one of our earliest leafing plants, and we have seen it 

 on the last day of February, with reddish-green leaves an inch long, in 

 hedges where, except on the pale green elder shoots and an occasional ever- 

 green, not another leaf was to be seen. Bishop Mant has alluded to this : — 



' ' And first behold we twitie Content to wait for May to spread 



The runners of the lithe Woodbine, Its yellow tubes o'erlaid with red : 



The first of wilding race that weaves Alas ! ere May arrives, with grief 



In nature's loom its downy leaves, 'Twill feel, now green, the blacken'd leaf 



And hangs in green festoons, that creep Thrown prematurely forth to bear 



O'er thorny brake or craggy steep ; The nipping frost, the blighting air." 



At such a season the landscape is looking dreary : the thorns with bronzed 

 stems hang dripping with rain-drops ; the black berries of the dark-lea,ved 

 privet glisten near the red twigs of the cornel, while perchance some bough 

 of the yellow osier seems like a golden rod, or some catkin of willow or hazel 

 gives a little brightness to the scene. Brown leaves with an occasional yellow 

 spray hang on the youngling oaks, and the rich crimson-tinted leaf or sten^ of 

 the bramble winds among them. But the Honeysuckle leaf has about it the 

 hopes and associations of spring-time. It is the herald of thousands of green 

 leaves which shall quiver on the stem and resound to the pattering rain-drops 

 of April, and be brightened by April rainbows — its spray is to the foliage 

 like the daisy to the flowers and the robin to the birds, the first, and there- 

 fore the fairest of its clan. 



The sweet odour of the Honeysuckle, and its frequency in the hedge, has 

 endeared the plant to all lovers of Nature ; and the poets, whose vocation 

 it is to express the thoughts and feelings which have filled the hearts of 

 the thousands who could never give them utterance — the poets, from 

 Chaucer downwards, have all praised the Honeysuckle. Chaucer tells how 

 those that — 



" Wore chapelets on hir hede 

 Of fresh Wodebind, be such as never were 

 To love untrue, in word, ne thought, ne dede ; 

 But ay stedfast : ne for plesanee ne fere, 

 Tho' that they shoulde hir hertes all to tere, 

 Would never tlit, but ever were stedfast 

 Till that hir lives thei asunder brust." 



The poet drew his image of constant affection doubtless from the clinging 

 nature of the AVoodbine, and its enduring hold on the tree. Spenser, Michael 

 Drayton and Shakspere all call it Woodbine, Honeysuckle, or Caprifoly ; but 

 Milton evidently intends this flower by the "twisted Eglantine," a name, 

 however, which all others of the older poets, Chaucer included, had given to 

 the Sweet Briar. 



Besides the blooms which the Honeysuckle bears in summer, it flowers 

 again, though far less luxuriantly, in October. The dull red berries are 

 clammy, and would not tempt any one by their flavour to pluck them, for 

 they are sweetish and insipid, though the berries of the Blue Honeysuckle 

 (X. ccerulea) are a very favourite food with the Kamtschatdales. Dr. Gries- 

 bach says : "The pine-forests of Kamtschatka have an underwood of roses 

 and honeysuckles. Among the edible fi'uits the Arctic bramble has the most 

 agreeable taste ; the elongated dark blue berries of a Lonicera come next ; 



