#caprifoliaceae

[ruthbancroftgarden]

Scabiosa farinosa

This delightful little Scabiosa forms neat cushions of shiny green foliage, with added interest provided by the scalloped leaf edges. The flower clusters are creamy white at the center, and tinged with pale purple at the outside. A great rock garden plant! From Tunisia and adjacent northeastern Algeria. Scabiosa belongs to the family Caprifoliaceae (the Honeysuckle Family).

-Brian

[faguscarolinensis]

Abelia chinensis / Chinese Abelia at the JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

Twinflower Linnaea borealis Caprifoliaceae

Photograph taken on June 18, 2023, at Purdon Conservation Area, Lanark Highlands, Ontario, Canada.

[dailybotany]

Symphoricarpos albus (Common Snowberry)

[francescointoppa]

L – Lonicera xylosteum L. – Caprifoglio peloso (Caprifoliaceae)

Bombus pascuorum (Scopoli, 1763)

[stopandlook]

Scientific Name: Scabiosa atropurpurea, syn. Sixalix atropurpurea Common Name(s): Sweet scabious, pincushion flower, mourningbride Family: Caprifoliaceae (honeysuckle) Life Cycle: Annual, perennial Leaf Retention: Deciduous if perennial Habit: Forb USDA L48 Native Status: Introduced Location: Plano, Texas Season(s): Spring

On iNaturalist, there are 12 species listed under the genus Sixalix and another 50 or so under Scabiosa, but it’s not at all clear to me why they’ve been separated. Plants of the World Online (POWO), which iNaturalist uses as its taxon authority, regards Sixalix as a synonym for Scabiosa, and a search for Sixalix in the U.S. government’s Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) yields no results (i.e., it doesn’t even exist in ITIS). It seems to me that all the Sixalix species should be moved under Scabiosa, but what do I know.

The USDA PLANTS database shows this plant as a perennial, but from what I’ve been able to gather, that’s only under the most favorable growing conditions. Even then, it’s a short-lived perennial (perhaps 3 years or so), and it’s an annual otherwise.

[thebotanicalarcade]

Honeysuckle printed fabric designed by William Morris in 1876

[drhoz]

#1949 - Viburnum plicatum - Japanese Snowball Bush

A 3m tall shrub in the Adoxaceae (formerly Caprifoliaceae), native to China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The Latin plicatum means “pleated”, referring to the texture of the leaves.

You might wonder, from this photo by @purrdence, why this plant is called the Snowball Bush. Snowballs aren’t usually this colour unless there’s been a horrible accident with a snowplow (I’m looking at you, George Lazenby).

The reason, of course, is that this is the fruit (later in the season the fruit turns black). The flowers, on the other hand, form compact white masses, with a central cluster of fertile yellowish-white flowers 5mm diameter, surrounded by a ring of showy, sterile flowers 2–3 cm diameter as a target for passing pollinators. A lot of the cultivars try to maximise the number and size of the sterile flowers. Unsuprisingly one of those cultivars is called ‘Popcorn’.

[coffeenuts]

Knautia arvensis by L'herbier en photos https://flic.kr/p/LGpXQb

[reddirttown]

Language of Flowers: Teasel

In the language of flowers, every day has its designated flower. The flower for today, December 2, is Teasel, which signifies misanthropy. Image above from Wikipedia. Dipsacus is a genus of flowering plant in the family Caprifoliaceae native to Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. The genus name is derived from the Greek word for thirst (dipsa) and refers to the cup-like formation made by Teasel…

[faguscarolinensis]

Patrinia scabiosifolia / Eastern Valerian at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[wildflowers-of-southern-ontario]

Twinflower Linnaea borealis Caprifoliaceae Family

Photographs taken on June 20, 2023, at Petroglyphs Provincial Park, Woodview, Ontario, Canada.

[francescointoppa]

L – Lonicera alpigena L. – Madreselva alpina (Caprifoliaceae)

L – Lonicera implexa Aiton – Caprifoglio mediterraneo (Caprifoliaceae)

L – Lonicera pileata Oliv. – Caprifoglio a cupola (Caprifoliaceae)

[stopandlook]

Scientific Name: Symphoricarpos orbiculatus Common Name(s): Coralberry, buckbrush Family: Caprifoliaceae (honeysuckle) Life Cycle: Perennial Leaf Retention: Deciduous Habit: Shrub USDA L48 Native Status: Native Location: Collin County, Texas Season(s): Fall

[thebotanicalarcade]

n663_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: Field book of western wild flowers London,C. [sic] P. Putnam's Sons,1915. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/23988290

[drhoz]

#1944 - Leycesteria formosa - Himalayan Honeysuckle

AKA, at least in English, as pheasant berry, pheasant-eye, spiderwort, whistle stick,  granny's curls, partridge berry, chocolate berry, shrimp plant/flower, treacle tree/berry,  flowering nutmeg, Himalaya nutmeg, Elisha's tears, Cape fuchsia, and Symphoricarpos rivularis. I’ll cover one of the local names in its home range below.

Those last few common names are particularly egregious nonsense - the plant is completely unrelated to nutmeg or to the fuchsia, and the entire family is unknown to Sub-Sharan Africa. And ‘Eilsha’s Tears is a corruption of Leycesteria. which was coined by the one-time director of Calcutta’s Royal Botanic Garden Nathaniel Wallich in honour of his friend William Leycester, a noted amateur horticulturist, in about 1820. ‘Formosa’ doesn’t help, since the plant doesn’t grow in Taiwan, and is simply the Latin for beautiful. 

Native to Pakistan, India, Nepal, both East and West Himalaya, Southwestern China, Tibet and Myanmar. A noxious invasive species in New Zealand, Australia, the neighbouring islands of Micronesia, and elsewhere. The berries are unpleasantly bitter when unripe, and possibly poisonous if reports from Australia and New Zealand are confirmed, but once soft and deep purple-brown in colour are edible and sweet, having a mild flavour reminiscent of caramel or toffee.

The plant was first cultivated in the UK in 1824, although reports at the time were a little disappointed - expectations had been raised by a plate in Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae Rariores, and while they might not have had Photoshop back then they certainly had artists who were a bit heavy handed with the coloured inks. After that they discovered that it grows well in cool dappled shade, readily colonising walls and cliffs (and the trunks of treeferns in New Zealand), and providing excellent food for pheasants. It’s also surprisingly resistant to pollution. 

Local people across the home range had a wide range of names and medical uses for the plant. In Standard Chinese one name is 鬼吹簫 (Guĭ chuī xiāo)  meaning ‘ghost-blown flute'. That and Whistle Stick refer to the way the hollow branches sing eerily when wind blows across them, and one of the non-medical uses for the plant.