THE WOODBINE, or HONEYSUCKLE. 



LONICERA PERICLYMENUM. 



Natural Order — Caprifoliace.e. 

 Class — Pentandria. Order — Monogynia. 



No British shrub claims our favourable no- 

 tice so early in the season as the Honeysuckle ; 

 for even before the earliest Snowdrop has ven- 

 tured to pierce the unthawed earth, we may dis- 

 cover in the sheltered wood or hedge-bank its 

 wiry stems, throwing out at every joint tufts of 

 tender green foliage. In this state it is even 

 richer in promise than the fiilly-expanded winter 

 flowers, for belonging as it does to the brightest 

 days of summer, its opening buds carry us away 

 at once to the genial season when the fields are 

 decked with their gayest attire, and the air 

 loaded with the most delicious perfumes, among 

 which its own fragrance is to occupy no mean 

 position. Later in the year it engages our at- 

 tention by its twisting stems clinging for support 

 to some lustier neighbour, and climbing with 

 undeviating accuracy from left to right until it has 

 overtopped its friendly support, when it asserts 

 its independence, loses a good deal of its twining 

 character, and displays its numerous clusters of 

 trumpet-shaped flowers. 



As its coil of stem, when once formed, never 

 materially enlarges, and is too tough to yield to 

 the expanding force of the tree around w^hich it 



