#caprifoliaceae

[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

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

[dailybotany]

Symphoricarpos albus (Common Snowberry)

[francescointoppa]

Caprifoglio (Lonicera caprifolium L., Caprifoliaceae)

[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.

[ifelten]

Honningbi (Apis mellifera)

Fouragerer på almindelig snebær (Symphoricarpos albus).

Western Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

Foraging on Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus).

[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’.

[thebotanicalarcade]

Honeysuckle printed fabric designed by William Morris in 1876

[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]

Abelia chinensis / Chinese Abelia 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 xylosteum L. – Caprifoglio peloso (Caprifoliaceae)

Bombus pascuorum (Scopoli, 1763)

[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

[konjaku]

藪空木[Yabuutsugi] Weigela floribunda

藪[Yabu] : Thicket, bush

空木[Utsugi] : Deutzia

空木 means 空ろな木[Utsuro na ki], that is, tree with hollow stems. Even with this name, there are different species. For example, Utsugi(Deutzia crenata) is in the family Ajisai(Hydrangea, Hydrangeaceae), Kogomeutsugi(Neillia incisa) is in the family Bara(Rose, Rosaceae), and Yabuutsugi is in the family Suikazura(Honeysuckle, Caprifoliaceae).

A closely related species is Hakoneutsugi(Weigela coraeensis), which is similar. The way to tell them apart, its flowers are white at the time of flowering and gradually turn reddish, and its calyx tube is suddenly thickened from the middle. On the other hand, the flowers of Yabuutsugi are reddish from the time of flowering, and the calyx tube is gently thickened.

[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.