# J. Honeysuckle actually worth something?



## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

I commented on how I had tons of japanese honeysuckle that I would like to kill but find now it may have uses:



> Experimentally, the flower extracts have been shown to lower blood cholesterol levels and are antibacterial, antiviral and tuberculostatic. Externally, the flowers are applied as a medicinal wash to skin inflammations, infectious rashes and sores. The flowers are harvested in early morning before they open and are dried for later herb use. This plant has become a serious weed in many areas of N. America, it might have the potential to be utilized for proven medicinal purposes.


Infectious rashes? Could this mean poison ivy, oak or sumack? The same page says the leaves are edible and slam full of calcium, magnesium and some other goodies. Anybody had the nerve to eat your japanese honeysuckle? 

Moopups posted this link on the links forum and this is everything it says about japanese honeysuckle .

I always thought that stuff was junk weed.


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## Wildcrofthollow (Apr 20, 2005)

Ok, yeah, it is useful,

So are those plastic grocerybags that you see all over the roads and up in trees etc.

So are mice, and rats, and television.

I have personally pulled out, by the roots, literally tons of the stuff. It is not that it is not useful, it is that it is INVASIVE. And now ubiquitous. :grump: 

I did not know that the leaves were considered edible though, I'll have to look that up. I might feel differently about it if I could eat it. But it had better taste great, cos I have an awful lot of it.


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## Wildcrofthollow (Apr 20, 2005)

Well, I'll be darned.

I just took a look at that link, I'm going to have to give that a try! I sure do hope that it tastes good.


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

Wildcrofthollow said:


> I have personally pulled out, by the roots, literally tons of the stuff. It is not that it is not useful, it is that it is INVASIVE. And now ubiquitous. :grump:
> 
> I did not know that the leaves were considered edible though, I'll have to look that up. I might feel differently about it if I could eat it. But it had better taste great, cos I have an awful lot of it.


Me too. I've been pullin it, poisoning it, ripping it out of trees cussin the whole time for quite a while. It never dawned on me it may be useful. I like the antibacterial, antiviral stuff too. I wonder how a few dried flowers would taste brewed with some tea... and some honeysuckle spinach... and fried honeysuckle and onions. I'm going to have to work up some nerve first though to be able to eat the leaves. I've hated that stuff for so long, it's very strange to think about eating it.

I've eaten the flowers before but I have no idea why I did it...lol.


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## Tabitha (Apr 10, 2006)

so what is the difference to other honeysuckle? I mean, how do you tell it apart. we have large areas covered with a honeyduckle and a young man very much interested in Botany informed me that it was Japanese honeysuckle and had medicinal properties. it is blooming right now. I wonder if you could tincture the flowers? My 2 goats eat it, but not with particular enthusiasm. I would need to get 50 goats to make a dent.


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

Tabitha said:


> so what is the difference to other honeysuckle? I mean, how do you tell it apart. we have large areas covered with a honeyduckle and a young man very much interested in Botany informed me that it was Japanese honeysuckle and had medicinal properties. it is blooming right now. I wonder if you could tincture the flowers? My 2 goats eat it, but not with particular enthusiasm. I would need to get 50 goats to make a dent.


The link I posted can help you to see what it can be used for.

Japanese honeysuckle is the type that vines and tries to crawl over everything. The other honeysuckle is a bush type and is not invasive.


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## swamp man (Dec 25, 2005)

Dahc said:


> The link I posted can help you to see what it can be used for.
> 
> Japanese honeysuckle is the type that vines and tries to crawl over everything. The other honeysuckle is a bush type and is not invasive.


Wait a munite,now.I'm confused.Where I live,we have "honeysuckle"(a vining plant,with wide,fairly rounded leaves,and pale flowers),and we have "japanese honeysuckle",with a much narrower,tapered leaf,which comes to a point,and grows bright yellow flowers.Both take over anything that I dont protect with both guns.I have never heard of a bush-type honeysuckle.Is it an azalea?I know that azaleas and honeysuckle are closely related.Somebody straighten me out,here.


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## Terry W (Mar 10, 2006)

Homeuysickle comes in both vine and bush forms. NON- NATIVE honeysuckles have hollow or soft pith in the stems. Woody stem centers are Native- not quite as invasive in their habits. They have natural controls that normally "keep them in their place"


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

swamp man said:


> Wait a munite,now.I'm confused.Where I live,we have "honeysuckle"(a vining plant,with wide,fairly rounded leaves,and pale flowers),and we have "japanese honeysuckle",with a much narrower,tapered leaf,which comes to a point,and grows bright yellow flowers.Both take over anything that I dont protect with both guns.I have never heard of a bush-type honeysuckle.Is it an azalea?I know that azaleas and honeysuckle are closely related.Somebody straighten me out,here.


This is Japanese honeysuckle:


















There are several types of bush honeysuckle. These are considered exotics.


> Lonicera fragrantissima (fragrant honeysuckle), L. maackii (Amur honeysuckle),
> L. morrowii (Morrow's honeysuckle), L. standishii (Standish's honeysuckle),
> L. tatarica (Tartarian honeysuckle), L. xylosteum (European fly honeysuckle),
> L. X bella (hybrid, pretty honeysuckle) and possibly others
> Honeysuckle family (Caprifoliaceae)


I think (can't be positive) that the bush honeysuckle here is closely related to the jasmines. None of the ones I listed in the quote grow well in this part of GA.


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## swamp man (Dec 25, 2005)

Dang.The ball of confusion is spinning out of control.The pic you posted is definitely what is locally referred to as "honeysuckle",but what I have come to know as "japanese honeysuckle"is much different,and yes,it does look alot like jasmine.Our "japanese honeysucke"(if that is its true identity)is sold in local nurseries,as an ornamental(the mcmansion folks trellace it to their mailboxes),and it has a glossy leaf.Hmmm..I'm gonna' hound dog this one.I just may have fallen victim to the "local name"syndrome.


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## Meg Z (Jun 8, 2004)

Do some more research before eating the flowers, at least. 
When the honeysuckle was blooming this spring, I planned on making honeysuckle jelly. When I looked up the recipe, I got lots of info on how I could use native honeysuckle, but the Japanese was poisonous. Now, we used to suck the nectar when we were kids, and I'm not dead yet, but I still refrained from making the jelly...paranoia?

Meg


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## skruzich (Jul 23, 2003)

Meg Z said:


> Do some more research before eating the flowers, at least.
> When the honeysuckle was blooming this spring, I planned on making honeysuckle jelly. When I looked up the recipe, I got lots of info on how I could use native honeysuckle, but the Japanese was poisonous. Now, we used to suck the nectar when we were kids, and I'm not dead yet, but I still refrained from making the jelly...paranoia?
> 
> Meg



I think that the poison isn't a poison, its just that its a purgative. 
You gotta treat this as a medicine. Too much will and can harm you like a poison. The flowers though if i remember correctly are not. I think they make wine out of them.


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

skruzich said:


> I think that the poison isn't a poison, its just that its a purgative.
> You gotta treat this as a medicine. Too much will and can harm you like a poison. The flowers though if i remember correctly are not. I think they make wine out of them.


Good point. This is the biggest reason that I don't jump on every herbal bandwagon I hear passing through, because I know just enough about medicinal herbs to really hurt myself... or even kill myself.

... But, I don't think these flowers could do that. I sat and watched a little girl of about 75lbs eat probably close to a hundred of them and she didn't have any negative effects. She told us she does it all the time.


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## BertaBurtonLake (Apr 19, 2005)

My peterson's guide to medicinal plants also states japanese honeysuckle to be a good medicinal plant. In japan, they call it sun and moon vine because some of the blooms are yellow (sun) and some are white. (moon) I love the way it smells and the sheep LOVE it. They eat it off all the fences here.

Just to muddy the waters a bit about varieties of honeysuckle, we have here in Va an indigenous variety that is red. Beautiful and not as invasive as the Jap[anese. It is also hard to find. I found some in our woods and moved it to climb the lattice under my deck for the hummingbirds.

~Berta


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## george darby (May 10, 2002)

here its the shrubby amur hunnysuckle that takes over in the understory of every wooded area makes a thick impregnable wad of brush everywere , some of the limbs can get 5 inches thick in some of the old growth areas .root system are shallow so they do come out easy when you hook to them fast growth the cows eat some of the young growth but prefer to eat the native vining hunnysuckle. the amur honneysucle is a problem mostly due to preventing the trees from starting as seedlings since they make such a dense undergrowth in areas that should be going back to forest


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## warrior (Nov 22, 2005)

Japanese honeysuckle also has another use. Natural foodplots for deer and rabbits since it stays green through the winter. 13-13-13 applied in the early fall can make the leaves lusher and more palatable to deer and rabbits. I have frertilized honeysuckle in this way and it amazing how the deer can tell the difference. They will graze down the fertilized patches and walk right past unfertilezed patches to do so.
I have heard of folks putting pallets and rolls of wire down on the ground and allowing honeysuckle to grow over to provide cover and nesting areas for rabbits and birds.


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## Step (Aug 4, 2005)

The invasive Japanese Honeysuckle is everything and more that has been written here. 

I did a fair amount of research and there are varieties that are poisonous. However the ones pictured above are not and the stems and leaves which are supposed to be harvested in the winter, are filled with a lot of nutrients and dried would make a wonderful tea. The fresh leaves, slightly boiled or steamed can be eaten as well as the flowers, as stated above. Supposedly they kill botulism, but I'm not a labratory, and don't think I want to test that theory.

I have been using the tea from the leaves and flowers, along with the dried flowers, powdered, in my soap..... and I found that soap cleared up those tiny little pimples and white heads that appear on the face, and a few areas that are persistantly itchy and raw are gone from my skin. 

It took several days before I noticed their disappearance. and since have been using other soaps, without the honeysuckle, with the same basic oil formula that I use in all my soaps and all those little annoying problems have returned....

In my opinion..... this is another plant with medicinal/theraputic qualities just like mint or basil, calendula and comfry. and from what I've seen so far, think honeysuckle is grossly misunderstood. I will continue to collect and dry this plant for my soaps and creams.... 

Unfortunately, the fragrance doesn't last and I've even set my honeysuckle soap into a layer of freshly picked flowers, and kept it in the frig for several days in hopes that it will absorb the aroma, which it did, slightly, but didn't last.


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

i am with warrior on the honeysuckle.i love the stuff cause i love deer and other critters.they love the stuff,one winter the deer came to a patch clos to my barn .the snow was heavy and this is all they had to eat.growing on fence and up off ground so the deer could eat it.i eat deer so i love honeysuckle....as a kid we ate the blooms also.pulled the center ot if i remeber correct.i am going to read the link a bit more.thanks for the info


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## crystalniche (Apr 4, 2005)

I love honeysuckle too. When I was a kid my aunt had an arbor over her back porch that was covered with Honeysuckle. I loved to sit there when it was in bloom, on the wooden porch eating an orange popcicle. My Mom showed us how to get the nectar from the blooms and we did a lot of that too. That plant was so big that us kids couldn't even make a dent in the blossoms tho we tried. I think that it is a wonderful plant when kept in check but could get out of hand rather quickly.


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## Peacock (Apr 12, 2006)

We've got lots of it -- I always thought that it was one of those adaptable plants like poison ivy, could grow in a vine, a bush or a tree depending on where it's growing. The kind that vines all over our fences, grows in bushes in the yard, and one amazing specimen that has grown into a 30 foot tree all look identical to me WRT yellow/white flowers and leaf form.


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## savinggrace (Oct 27, 2005)

Now my 'honeysuckle' has red berries. I was always told those are poisonious.

My 'honeysuckle' looks just like those in the photo, but with white/pink flowers and hollow stems.

Does your Japanese honeysuckle have berries?

Thanks

Melissa


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