344 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 444. 



New or Little-known Plants. 

 Lonicera hirsuta. 



THIS native twining high-climbing Honeysuckle (see 

 illustration on this page), although now rarely seen 

 in cultivation, is well suited to enliven the garden with its 

 ample dark green foliage and terminal and axillary clusters 

 of bright orange-colored hirsute fragrant flowers, which 

 open in June, and in fading turn to dull purple or brown. 

 Lonicera hirsuta inhabits rocky banks or climbs over 



With Lonicera hirsuta is grown in the Arnold Arboretum 

 a climbing Honeysuckle (see illustration on page 345), 

 which is intermediate between Lonicera hirsuta and Loni- 

 cera Sullivantii in the color and pubescence of the leaves 

 and flowers, and may be a natural hybrid between these 

 species. Nothing of its origin is known beyond the fact 

 that it was raised from a cutting taken from a plant which 

 long grew in the Harvard Botanic Garden at Cambridge. 

 The specimen in the Arboretum is a vigorous plant with 

 glabrous stems, light green leaves destitute of the bloom 



Fig. 45. — Lonicera hirsuta. 



bushes and fences, and is distributed from the province of 

 Ontario along the northern shores of Lake Superior to the 

 Saskatchewan, and southward to Pennsylvania and Michi- 

 gan. In gardens it may be used to cover trellises and 

 arbors, to grow over coarse shrubs and to climb into small 

 trees; and as a garden plant it is superior to the much 

 more commonly planted Lonicera Sullivantii (see Garden 

 and Forest, vol. iii., p. 187, f. 34), which is a less vigorous 

 plant and more frequently disfigured by insects and 

 disease. 



which distinguishes those of Lonicera Sullivantii, and pale 

 and covered below with short pubescence, and orange- 

 colored flowers slightly pubescent on the corolla-tubes. 

 Although more vigorous in habit and general appearance, 

 this plant resembles Lonicera Sullivantii, but the pubes- 

 cence on the lower surface of the leaves and the color and 

 pubescence of the flowers suggest a hybrid origin. The 

 plant cultivated in the Botanic Garden of Copenhagen as 

 Lonicera media (Coll. G. Nicholson, No. 4132) appears to 

 be the same thing. 



