Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) any other time is to be grubbed out – and I’ve pulled bushels of the stuff. It does awful damage to our eastern woodlands. It displaces native ground plants, and strangles young trees and anything else that gets in its path. But in May, I’m glad Crowley’s Ridge is not barren of honeysuckle.
Evening time in early May brings the scent of honeysuckle wafting in the window with every gentle breeze. I love the scent of honeysuckle! Not the cloying bottled kind but the fresh one when the first blooms open.
One of her classmates died when my grandmother was a young girl. Being poor, she said, the children cut honeysuckle to heap on her grave and she could never again enjoy its scent. I’m so glad I have no bad memories of that sweet fragrance.
When each grandchild had enough manual dexterity, I taught them how to “suck the honey” as I did their mothers. With my thumbnail, I’d demonstrate how to press carefully just above the base of a bloom so that it cut all the way around but not through the style, then pull gently. When the stigma gets to the opening, there’s a drop of nectar shining, ready to plop in your mouth and savor the sweetness. That’s one of our favorite spring rituals.
There’s a quality to the air here in early May – maybe it’s everywhere, I don’t know – but it’s soft and tender, like someone dearly loved touching your face. Adding to the atmosphere are fireflies and the songs of the cricket frog. It almost makes me swoon for the beauty of it all. And then I’m glad for honeysuckle. For one glorious month, it is, oh, so sweet!
1 comment:
Nice writing, Wild Child! I love your descriptions of the whole May scene, of which the fragrance of honeysuckle is just a part.
Japanese honeysuckle is present on our floodplain, but between my efforts to pull it out (because it retains most of its leaves it's easily spotted climbing young trees during the winter), and the heavy shade the forest provides in the summer I don't think it gets to bloom much here. Every year new seedlings of this plant sprout in the garden and as soon as I recognize them they're yanked.
A couple of years ago some seedlings of the native honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) showed up in the woods just behind the house and I've allowed them to stay. This spring one of them made a small cluster of flowers. The color of the flowers, a rich red-orange, I like much better than Japanese honeysuckle, but if they have a fragrance I can't detect it.
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