Lonicera Fragrantissima Winter Beauty
The winter honeysuckle bush lonicera fragrantissima was introduced from china in the mid nineteenth century and its delightfully fragrant flowers soon became a favorite with gardeners and landscapers.
Lonicera fragrantissima winter beauty. You can still find unattended stands thriving at crumbling old homesteads and graveyards. Winter flowering honeysuckle lonicera fragrantissima and l. Lonicera fragrantissima is a species of flowering plant in the honeysuckle family known by the common names winter honeysuckle fragrant honeysuckle january jasmine chinese honeysuckle kiss me at the gate and sweet breath of spring. X purpussii winter beauty there are two main varieties of winter flowering honeysuckles normally grown.
Paired oval leaves to 7cm 3in long dark green above blue green beneath. This wonderful winter flowering shrub produces fragrant creamy white flowers in mild spells between december and march on almost leafless branches. Notes on lonicera purpusii winter beauty the finest winter flowering honeysuckle of all with clusters of pale flowers on bare branches from early spring a sweet scent for gateways and walls under windows val bourne garden writer. Lonicera x purpusii winter beauty is one of the best of the winter flowering shrubby honeysuckles bearing sweetly fragrant creamy white flowers on bare stems from late winter it makes an attractive spreading deciduous shrub.
Beloved for its extraordinarily fragrant winter blooms lonicera fragrantissima sweetest honeysuckle is a bushy deciduous shrub. Lonicera winter beauty is a neat shrub which can easily fill a gap in your flower border. Lonicera fragrantissima from burncoose nurseries shrubby honeysuckles available online to buy information. It s extremely attractive to insects and provides a vital source of nectar for bumblebees which may have been disturbed from hibernation.
Bristly margins when young semi evergreen keeps some of its foliage all year and will drop some. Details winter beauty is a strong growing rounded medium sized deciduous shrub with ovate leaves and small sweetly scented cream flowers 15mm in width on the bare branches in winter and early spring occasionally followed by red berries. These are sometimes followed by dull red berries which may cause a mild stomach upset if ingested. The leaves when they appear are a rich shade of green usually flushed with a plush purple.
In late winter to early spring a profusion of highly fragrant short tubed creamy white flowers line up along each stem before the leaves emerge. It is native to china and has been an introduced species to other parts of the world. Deciduous or semi evergreen. Both are shrubby types rather than the more common climbing honeysuckle and both are considered as semi evergreen or deciduous.
The budded branches may be cut for fragrant indoor arrangements.