Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle, like lavender, is a beautiful plant that makes the garden smell wonderful on summer days.

The fast growing, climbing plant is great for covering ugly fences and walls as well as providing food for butterflies and a home for small animals and birds.

It is also a plant with considerable folklore.

Scottish traditions says that if honeysuckle grows around your front door, witches will be unable to enter your home. Well, I can't imagine it would do more than make me pause to enjoy the beautiful flowers and fragrance. In fact, I think it might even encourage me to knock on a front door to say how lovely it looked.

Honeysuckle is also said to protect gardens from evil and if the flowers are brought into the house they will attract offers of marriage. Bring them into the bedroom and their scent can inspire dreams of passion. In the language of flowers, honeysuckle represents fidelity in love, because of the way the stems wrap around each other and cling together.

Chinese herbalists use honeysuckle to treat colds, flu and fevers and it is also sometimes an ingredient in massage oils and body lotions for its scent and for its calming and healing effects. However, there are many different varieties of honeysuckle, with different properties, and the berries are poisonous. You should always get expert advice if you are thinking of using honeysuckle as an ingredient.

Note: This is for information purposes only and is not medical advice

Links:
www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plantprofile_honeysuckle.shtml
www.new-age.co.uk/flower-language.htm
www.mysticalimage.co.uk/herbs2.html
www.herbsociety.co.uk/hom-honeysuckle.htm