Woodbine Honey Suckle
Halq’emeylem Name
Currently unknown
Latin Name
Lonicera periclymenum L.
Pronunciation
About Woodbine Honey Suckle
The honeysuckle we currently have in the garden is a cultivar, Lonicera “Mandarin.” We picked this orange-coloured cultivar because it is similar in colour to the Indigenous honeysuckle (and is beautiful).
“Lonicera periclymenum, commonly called woodbine or European honeysuckle, is a deciduous shrub with a vine-like growth habit. It typically twines and scrambles to 12’ (infrequently to 20’) tall. It is native to Europe, North Africa and western Asia, but was introduced over time with subsequent naturalization occurring in some scattered areas of North America, primarily in Nova Scotia, Ontario, New England and the Pacific Northwest.
“Ovate to obovate leaves (to 2 1/2” long) appear along the stems in pairs (two leaves per node). Leaves are dark green above and blue-green beneath. New leaves emerge lightly pubescent in spring, but mature to smooth and glaucous by summer. Two-lipped flowers (each to 2” long) bloom from summer somewhat sporadically into fall (late June-October) in 3 to 5 whorled terminal spikes. The interior of each flower is creamy white rapidly aging to yellow. The exterior is usually crimson purple, although it infrequently appears yellow, pink, or brown. Flowers are followed by red berries.
Genus name honors Adam Lonitzer (1528-1586), German botanist, the author of an herbal (Kreuterbuch) many times reprinted between 1557 and 1783.
“Specific epithet is a Greek name for honeysuckle.” (MBG)

Connections
Shakespeare
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in… (Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1)
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee! (Titania to Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 4. 1)
…The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait:
So angle we for Beatrice; who even now
Is couched in the woodbine coverture. (Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing, 3.1)
Throw me in the channel! I’ll throw thee…
Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! Murder, murder!
thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill God’s officers and
King’s? Ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed; a
man-queller and a woman-queller. (Mistress Quickly speaking to Falstaff in Henry IV, Part II, 2.1)
Indigenous Knowledge
Twinflower Honeysuckle (Lonicera involucrata (Rich.) Banks ex Spring.), also called Black Twinberry, is a related plant. The berry is not traditionally eaten by humans. They are known as “robin’s berries (Nuxalk), Raven’s berry or Crow’s berry (Haida), “little snake’s berry” (Squamish)(Turner, Food Plants, p. 142), and also called “bear’s berry” in some languages (Ancient Pathways, vol. 1, p. 176). Black Twinberry wood has been used to make “chisel handles and other small objects” (Turner, Ancient Pathways, Vol 1., p. 109). Berries were used to as a stain in basket-making and woodwork, “as well as for face painting and buckskin decoration” (Turner, Ancient Pathways, Vol 1., p. 386). Twigs and inner bark could used to make a tonic (Ancient Pathways, Vol 1., 420) or “a wash or poultice for sores” (Ancient Pathways, Vol 1., p. 422).
Gallery
References
Images: Tony Alter | Sannse | Melissa Walter
Integrated Taxonomic Information System. (n.d.). Lonicera periclymenum L.. Retrieved from https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=35301#null
Missouri Botanical Garden. (n.d.). Lonicera periclymenum. Retrieved from
https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=372017&isprofile=1&basic=Lonicera%20periclymenum
Turner, Nancy. Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America(2014). McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Turner, Nancy (1995). Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples. Royal British Columbia Museum.