The Honeysuckle grows in all parts of the country. You will find its
sweet-scented flowers in thickets and woods during summer and autumn. It
is a shrub with long, feeble, woody stems. These stems twist themselves
round young trees and hedges, which support the plant and raise it up
towards the sun.
The Honeysuckle flowers grow in loose heads at the end of the leaf-stem.
They are shaped like long trumpets, and these trumpets are very narrow
at the one end, and widen out at the mouth into two unequal lips. The
lower lip is merely a long strap curled over at the end. But the upper
lip is very much broader, and it is fringed at the edge. These beautiful
flower-trumpets are yellow-pink, sometimes almost purple on the outside,
and inside they are pale yellow. There are often seven to ten of these
trumpets close together in one cluster, and you can see the heads of the
stamens, and the long green tip of the seed-vessel coming out of the
mouth of each trumpet.
After the flowers are withered, the seeds grow into clear dark crimson
berries, of which the birds are very fond.
The leaves of the Honeysuckle grow opposite each other in pairs. They
are blue-green in colour, are very smooth, and have a network of tiny
veins all over them. Each leaf is oval, and its edges are smooth all the
way round.