Fly honeysuckle is native to Finland, one of the typical plants of fertile shady groves. A rather straggly shrub, it produces yellowish-white, small, scented flowers early in spring as the leaves break bud. After flowering, the attractive bright red berries develop in joined pairs, looking rather like red currants, but they are poisonous.
In full foliage the Amur honeysuckle brings to mind rather more exotic genera. The gracefully curving branches bear leaves in opposite pairs, with white flowers produced in pairs where the leaves join the stems. They appear in June, and by autumn develop into bright red, slightly poisonous berries.
This climbing honeysuckle, which has decorated the grey log walls of so many Finnish homes, is still probably the most popular of all our flowering woody climbers. Reddish on first opening but changing to creamy-white, the scent of the flowers is inseparably associated with light summer nights.
In Finland blue honeysuckle grows naturally only in Kuusamo, close to the Arctic Circle, where it is a protected endangered species. It is widely used in gardens, being both extremely hardy and undemanding; occasionally it is found as an escapee.
Blue honeysuckle forms a low bush as wide as it is high, with blue-green leaves. The flowers, appearing in May, are yellowish. After Midsummer the blue berries ripen, bitter-tasting and slightly poisonous due to the saponins they contain.
Although Alpine honeysuckle is native to the mountains of central European, where it prefers full sun, it nevertheless thrives when planted in shadier spots. A fairly low and dense shrub, the leaves – large for a honeysuckle - are a shiny dark green on their upper surface. In shape they are oval-lanceolate with short stalks, the under-surface paler and hairy when young. The small flowers, long-tubed, are yellowish, the bract often reddish, as are the ovary bracteoles. The flowers are usually in pairs at the end of a stalk.