"Every
plant has its place, just as every dog has its day,
and the very place for this honeysuckle is the wall
of a comfortable English cottage, where it appears more
at home than anywhere else in the world, not forgetting
the woods in the south of Europe, wherein it plays the
reveller, and perfumes the breeze."
From
there Hibberd slips into his never-far-away Shakespeare,
but finally manages to drag himself back to observe
that there were some hundred species of Lonicera
available to the Victorian gardener, although only half
a dozen or so received much attention: the L. caprifolium,
L periclymenum, L. sempervirens, L. brachypoda,
L. Chinensis and L. Japonica.
The
winter-flowering honeysuckle (L. fragrantissima)
was considered a useful, but highly unattractive shrub.
