Vines and Other Climbing Plants

Honeysuckle.

The Honeysuckle family is quite large and diverse including both evergreen and deciduous varieties, flowering and non-flowering. Generally, speaking the Honeysuckle family consists of plants that are all quick growing, disease free, long-lived and bushy growing. Honeysuckles can get woody and straggly though if not maintained, so need regular pruning to keep them tidy and encourage vigour. Most are not fussy about their soil conditions and once established will tolerate quite poor and dry soils. Although liking full sun they will happily grow in a little shade. 

Some Honeysuckles are not very good climbers and will need support of something like trellis and also a little encouragement by threading their stems through the trellis to start them off. In fact they are not a true climber at all as they don’t produce tendrils, or suckers, but when the plant reaches a certain size its stems will start to entwine through things to get support.

Most Honeysuckles are grown for their large exotic looking flowers that have colours ranging through reds, oranges and yellows to whites. Flowers are often scented: full of nectar for the insect population and after pollination will result in berries that are also good for the wildlife. The red berries are slightly poisonous to humans in most varieties with the exception of the fruit of the type commonly called the Honeyberry. (Link to Honey Berry.) 

There are other Honeysuckle family member plants that are not climbers at all and would not even be recognised as being Honeysuckles. Lonicera Nitidia is one such plant that is a small leafed, evergreen bush, which is ideal for clipping and often used in making low hedges and sometimes also used in Topiary work.

Honeysuckles will generally root easily enough from cuttings, but Lonicera Nitidia in particular is another one of those plants that will produce self-rooted plantlets. These may grow both from shoots coming from below soil level that will root as they develop and become separate plants, or they may come from branches that touch the soil which will quickly root and also develop into separate plants.