Plant of the week!

This week's featured plant is Trumpet Honeysuckle(Lonicera sempervirens).This vine is blooming beautifully in my garden right now.

Honeysuckles get a bad rap because of their very invasive cousins the Exotic Honeysuckles (Lonicera tartarica, L. morrowii, L.maackii).These honeysuckles can easily take over an area and easily crowd out our native species.

The trumpet honeysuckle though is a little more civilized. It is a vigorous, deciduous, twining vine which typically grows 10-15' (less frequently to 20') and is one of the showiest of the vining honeysuckles. I've trained the honeysuckle in my landscape up a trellis and it's now climbing beautifully along a fence.

The flowers are large, non-fragrant, narrow, trumpet-shaped flowers in scarlet to orangish red on the outside and yellowish inside. Great for attracting hummingbirds! The flowers appear in late spring at stem ends in whorled clusters.

This honeysuckle can be easily grown in average, medium, well-drained soil in full sun. Tolerates shade, but the profuseness of flowering is inversely proportional to the amount of shade. Adapts to a wide range of soils. Prefers moist, loamy soils.Very easy to grow!

Learn more about Trumpet Honeysuckle here:http://urbanext.illinois.edu/hortanswers/plantdetail.cfm?PlantID=518&PlantTypeID=5