Lonicera fragrantissima Seeds | Winter Honeysuckle
LATIN NAME: Lonicera fragrantissima
COMMON NAME: Winter Honeysuckle
Plant Profile
Lonicera fragrantissima is a twiggy, arching shrub of the honeysuckle family that ignores the usual flowering calendar. Its buds sit on the previous season’s wood all winter and open in flushes whenever the temperature lifts, so one plant may carry flowers from midwinter into early spring. Each bloom is bilabiate, with an upper and a lower lip, and the stamens stand out beyond the mouth of the tube.
The paired arrangement is the signature of the genus: two flowers share one short stalk in the axil of a leaf scar, and after pollination the two ovaries ripen into berries fused at the base. The fruit is red and appears in early summer, stripped quickly by birds, and the flowers age from cream to a deeper yellow.
The leaves are oval, dull green and set in opposite pairs along the twig. In a mild winter they stay on the plant until new growth pushes them off, which is what makes the shrub semi-evergreen; in a hard winter it goes fully bare and the flowers open on naked wood. Either way the habit is twiggy at the base and arching at the top, and an unpruned plant will reach the height of a person.
The species is native to eastern and central China and reached Western gardens during the nineteenth century, grown for the winter scent and for forcing under glass. It has since proved adaptable well beyond its origin: dry soils, urban shade, heavy clay and coastal wind all suit it, which is what turned it into a problem once it escaped.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus is defined chemically by iridoid glycosides, and loganin, secologanin and sweroside recur across it. Loganin sits at the head of the secologanin branch that feeds monoterpene indole alkaloid synthesis elsewhere in the plant kingdom, which is why honeysuckles are studied beyond their garden value. The leaves also carry caffeoyl derivatives including chlorogenic acid and luteolin glycosides.
Uses & Benefits
Escaped plants are recorded across eastern North America, from New England into the Midwest and the southeast, where winter honeysuckle colonises forest edges, old fields and hedge lines. Birds eat the paired red berries, pass the seed and deposit it beneath fence-row perches. Once in, the shrub leafs out early enough to shade the spring woodland flora and it tolerates a shaded understorey, so it persists rather than fading, and it is listed as invasive in several states.
Cut branches in midwinter, when the buds are fat but unopened, and stand them in tepid water in a cool room; the flowers open steadily and a single vase will scent a room. Slit the base of each stem and change the water, because the wood is hard and slow to take up. In the garden it is best sited where the scent collects: against a warm wall or beside a path.
On the first mild afternoons the flowers are worked by honeybees and by small solitary bees, and the shrub is one of the few reliable nectar sources available before the willows open.
Growing from Seed
Honeysuckles multiply readily in vitro. A nodal segment with a single axillary bud will break and elongate on a cytokinin-rich medium, and the shoots root easily enough to be moved to soil. The method bulks up a chosen clone quickly and holds clean stock of forms that strike poorly from cuttings.
Honeysuckle seed is dormant in two stages, an immature embryo that needs warmth and a seed coat that needs cold, so berries should be cleaned and sown fresh. Squash the ripe fruit, wash off the pulp, and sow into a pot of moist seed compost under a thin layer of grit. Leave the pot outdoors through a winter so rain and frost do the work, and cover it against mice. Move seedlings on once the stems stiffen and the plants stand about fifteen centimetres tall.
Winter honeysuckle flowers on wood made the previous season, so prune immediately after flowering and not in autumn. Take out a few of the oldest stems at the base, thin the centre so light reaches it, and shorten the arching leaders if the shrub is outgrowing its place. It regenerates from hard cutting, but flowers best on a frame of young wood.
Our Take
Put it where you walk in winter, not where you look in summer, because for half the year it is a plain green bush and for the other half it is the best thing in the garden. I keep one clipped hard beside the path, where the fragrance is unavoidable. Its cousin Japanese honeysuckle is the climbing member of the genus and a cautionary tale about what happens when a Lonicera is let loose, while fly honeysuckle is the modest woodland relative for a hedge. If you want the fruit rather than the scent, honeyberry is the edible member and crops in the same early slot. Sow fresh, be patient, and prune after the flowers.
Related Reading
Readers interested in Winter Honeysuckle frequently explore these as well: