My Favorite Native: Honeysuckle!

This time of year the native honeysuckle growing on my arbor is one of the showiest flowers around. Tons of flowers are covering the controllable version of lonicera. The native honeysuckle goes by the name of Lonicera sempervirens and not Lonicera japonica. I have the exotic foreigner too but it came with the garden! And it's been ignoring my eviction notices. The difference between the two is their growth habit. The native honeysuckle grows at a pace where the garden can actually keep up with its maintenance. The only drawback is that the native honeysuckle doesn't have the characteristic honey sweet fragrance, but I've talked about native honeysuckle before. 

Check out that link above for more on the native honeysuckle but for the rest of this post I'll just show you some pretty pictures! Any objections? No? Good! (You really didn't have a choice anyway ;))

This variety is called 'Alabama Crimson'. They really need to hybdridize and orange variety so Tennessee gardeners can plant the 'Orange Vol'.

It's spring, the storms are done for the week, and things are looking up!

Here is a cropped picture from the last post. If you look toward the back of the picture you'll see another honeysuckle. This one isn't a named variety and came forma  cutting from my parent's honeysuckle plant.

Red honeysuckle definitely dazzles this time of year in the garden! And the hummingbirds love it too!

For more on natives join Gail's native wildflower/plant week at Clay and Limestone.