If you ever have walked down a country road in the south you may have stopped to smell and admire the Japanese Honeysuckle. You may also remember, as a child, stripping a flower down so you could suck the sweet nectar. Well, pretty as it is, some people feel that the honeysuckle is an aggressive plant that chokes out others and stakes a piece of land out for itself In the shade of forest edges and in stream corridors, the plant takes over by shading the area and killing off the other plants that need the sun.

Native shrubs and even small trees can be caught in the deadly shadow of the Japanese Honeysuckle. If not killed, the shade could stump the growth of the sun dependent plant and render unable to reproduce. The honeysuckle even has a death grip the will wrap around the www.sboagen.net stem of other plants and grasp them and keep water from transporting up and down the stem. Other plants are safe as long as they keep away from the shaded areas that the honeysuckle so wants to live in. They can survive longer if they stay away from dense growth away from other plants.

The Japanese honeysuckle can grow up to thirty feet or more. It is a woody vine that is covered with fine hairs and as they grow older they become hollow and the bark will peel and shred. The leaves are about two inches long and are lobed. Each leaf is green or evergreen and the darkness of that green will be determined by the harshness of the winter. The flowers can not be missed. They are trumpet shaped and are colored creamy white unless aged, and then they turn a pale yellow. These flowers are fragrant and occur in pairs up and down the vine.

One would not think so, but he Japanese Honeysuckle produces berries. These berries have few seeds and they mature every autumn. Even though there are few seeds produced, the plant will colonize almost any setting. Whether it is a roadside ditch or deep in the forest, the plant will find its niche and propagate. The negative thing about the honeysuckle is that it will invade disturbed lands when nature or man knocks the balance of nature out of whack. If an insect infestation or man made disturbances occur, the plant will quickly become a nuisance killing off the native species and taking over.

The Japanese Honeysuckle is native to Eastern Asia and was brought over in the 1800s as a ground cover. Now it can be found in the central eastern and southern reaches of the United States. The only thing that has kept the plant from spreading all over the US in the sever winters. The plant does not do well in the cold at all. Seen as a weed in some areas, people have tried to manage the weed by using chemicals and by putting in special laws that prohibit the plant to be transported over state lines. If you love the honeysuckle, the weed idea should be out the window because it is a beautiful plant that can decorate your garden or just cover a fence or deck.
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