62 FLOWERS OF THE WOODS AND COPSES 



Honeysuckle (Lonicera Periclymenum, L.) 



This aromatic, sweet-flowered climber is found in Europe, in recent 

 beds, not earlier, and N. Africa, its distribution being confined to the 

 North Temperate Zone of to-day. It is found in every part of Great 

 Britain, ascending to 1500 feet in Durham. 



Honeysuckle is a well-known, woodland, climbing plant, which 

 loves the darkest depths of the forest, wood, or copse, seeking support 

 from a neighbouring sapling or older tree, or clambering up the over- 

 hanging branches of hawthorn, blackthorn, or other forms of under- 

 growth. By the roadside, too, it nestles amidst briers and thorns, 

 casting around a rich fragrant odour for the passer-by, and attracting 

 the long-tongued moths at night. 



The climbing habit of this plant is one of its principal features. It 

 twines round and round the stems of thick or thin, strong or supple 

 trees and other plants, often forming an arbour when climbing and 

 scrambling irregularly in the hedgerow. The leaves are not united at 

 the base, and are deciduous or fall in autumn; when old, shiny and 

 dark green, rather light when young, and hairy. The leaves are egg- 

 shaped, oblong, stalkless above, and shortly stalked below. They are 

 bluish -white beneath. 



The flowers are cream-colour, gaping, in terminal whorls on long 

 flower-stalks, and are reddish in colour outside. The calyx-teeth do 

 not fall, the corolla is glandular and smoothly downy. The berries are 

 red when ripe. 



Honeysuckle may be as much as 20 ft. in length. Its flowers are 

 in bloom from May to July. It is a deciduous shrub, and can be multi- 

 plied by cuttings. 



The stigma and the anthers are mature together. It is like L. 

 Caprifolium in flower but the tube is shorter, in this it is 22-25 mm< 

 In L. Caprifolium the tube is 30 mm. long, 1-2 mm. wide, a large 

 part being occupied by the style, but it is often half-full of honey. 

 Honey is accessible (being at the surface or in a cup at the bottom 

 of the tube), when collected, to many bees, e.g. Bombus hortorum, 

 but bees are only accidental visitors. The pollination is crepuscular, 

 i.e. effected principally by nocturnal moths. 



The flowers, at first erect, open first at 7 p.m. and give off a strong 

 scent. Soon after they turn down and become horizontal. At first 

 the stamens project in front, and the stigma is turned down beyond the 

 anthers. Later, after insect visits, the pollen is exhausted, the stamens 



