🔴 Invasive - Remove
Bush Honeysuckle
Lonicera maackii, L. morrowii, L. tatarica
This is an invasive species that harms native ecosystems. It should be removed when found to protect local plant and wildlife habitats.
Lonicera maackii, L. morrowii, L. tatarica
This is an invasive species that harms native ecosystems. It should be removed when found to protect local plant and wildlife habitats.
Several closely related Asian shrubs: upright, multi-stemmed, with paired oval leaves, paired tubular flowers and red or orange berries. They leaf out early and hold leaves late, shading the forest floor for weeks longer than natives.
Native to: East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Russia)
Planted from the late 1800s onward as ornamentals, wildlife cover and highway screens. Amur honeysuckle in particular was distributed by the millions before its spread was understood.
Its long leaf season shades out spring wildflowers and tree seedlings, and its berries are poor food that birds still eat and spread. Nesting birds in bush honeysuckle sit lower and lose more nests to predators.
Colour and texture: Plain mid-green. The check that settles it: snip a pencil-thick stem and look at the pith. Hollow means bush honeysuckle; solid white means a native shrub you leave.
Leaves: opposite pairs, oval, 1–3 inches, smooth-edged. Out by March, still on in November.
Stems: older stems are hollow when cut across — native shrubs with similar leaves have solid pith.
Flowers: paired, tubular, white to pink, May–June.
Berries: paired red or orange berries along the stems from late summer.
Berries July–October.
Paired red, or sometimes orange, translucent berries where the leaves join the stem.
Why it matters: They are junk food (high sugar, low fat), so migrating birds that fill up on them arrive underfed, and spread the shrub while doing it.
A woody crown too big to pull and too stubborn to cut: wineberry, multiflora rose, barberry, bush honeysuckle, tree seedlings.
Avoid: Do not clamp halfway up the stem. It snaps, and the crown stays in the ground and re-sprouts.
Any plant carrying ripe seed or fruit. Once you start dragging it, you are sowing it.
It can stay on site. Cut stems and wrenched crowns can stay. Pile them off the soil so the crowns dry.
Native shrubs with opposite oval leaves (arrowwood viburnum, native honeysuckles) have solid pith. Snip a pencil-thick stem: hollow means invasive bush honeysuckle.
Avoid: Do not carry a fruiting plant across the site to a pile. That walk is how the next patch gets planted.
Before the first cut: Snip a pencil-thick stem first: hollow means bush honeysuckle, solid means a native shrub you should leave.
Wrench or dig. Shallow, spreading roots make bush honeysuckle a good plant.
Best window: early spring or late autumn, when it is the only shrub in leaf.