The Trouble with Honeysuckle Bushes

Daves story

 There's trouble with honeysuckles, you say? Those beautiful vines with the sweet-tasting fragrant cascades of flowers? Those honeysuckles?

  No, not those honeysuckles. The troublesome ones are bushes, not the vines you may be thinking of. These bushes grow virtually everywhere in the eastern half of North America. They are spreading faster than rabbits. They shade out everything in their path. They form impenetrable thickets unfit for habitation by humans and most beasts.

  Some bird species do like to nest in bush honeysuckles, but only at great peril to themselves and their nestlings. The honeysuckle's branching structure makes bird nests clearly visible from below, tempting any passing raccoon, feral cat, or other climbing predator. As you may already know, raccoons and cats are great fans of Oscar Wilde: they can resist anything but temptation. And perhaps the topper: one noteworthy beast that thrives in the bush honeysuckle is the mosquito. They do not necessarily breed there, but my personal experience is that they absolutely do congregate there. That congregation worships human blood, particularly yours and mine. If you had no other reason to fear and loathe the bush honeysuckle, the mosquitoes alone would provide sufficient cause. Think West Nile.

And they want to eat your children.

  OK, they don't really want to eat your children. They don't want anything. They are just a bunch of stupid bushes, after all. But by virtue of their great success they are a threat to every tree, every wildflower, and every naturally forested habitat in eastern North America. Thus they are a threat to you and me--to us. Here is their story:

THE HONEYSUCKLE THREAT

  The Bush Honeysuckles, primarily Lonicera mackii & Lonicera tatarica and  their hybrids with one another, were introduced into New York State by presumably well-meaning people who remembered them from Europe and Asia as vigorous ornamentals that provided lots of flowers, plenty of red fruit, food for birds, and a quick, easy hedge and privacy fence from the neighbors. For many years they fulfilled  these valuable functions quite well in cities and suburbs of the Northeast, but there was a  problem. The problem stemmed from all that red fruit, and the from three unfortunate facts:

  Birds and mice like to eat the fruits, birds and mice are mobile, and birds and mice spread their droppings widely.

  Wherever the droppings of birds and mice fell, new honeysuckles sprang up, first by the thousand, then by the million. They are spreading right now. They are probably in your yard as you read this, plotting to take over your property and make it their own.

  Left unchecked, they will grow and reproduce right under your nose. They will shade out trees, grass, other bushes, and anything else you may want to grow. They will block your driveway so you must crawl from the road to your front door. Eventually they will creep into your bedroom and strangle you in the darkness.

  That is an exaggeration. Honeysuckles strangle people only in daylight. Regardless, they must be stopped!  You can do it. Here's how:

FINDING HONEYSUCKLES (BEFORE THEY FIND YOU)

  The first, necessary step is to identify them. Honeysuckles are "erect shrubs," i.e., they grow upright instead of drooping to the ground. They usually branch multiple times from the base or crown (more on that term later), and spread out at least as wide as they grow high, up to 15 feet or even higher. The bark is tan to light brown, often with thin longitudinal lines. The smooth-edged leaves are pointed, with obvious fine veins, and sprout from exactly opposite sides of the branch.

  The smaller branches themselves will sprout out from opposite sides of the larger branches. The flowers are typical honeysuckle style. The fruit is small, red, and abundant. In leaf, a pure stand of honeysuckle bushes presents a solid, opaque wall of green. In the dead of winter, that same stand is an ugly, tangled mass of brownish twigs and branches with bare dirt underneath. The bare dirt results from their ability to shade out everything that used to grow there, including grass, wildflowers, and seedling trees. The trees you see survive only because they grew too tall to be shaded out before the honeysuckles moved in.

  But to recognize them you need not know any of that. Simply wait until after all the trees in your neck of the woods have lost their leaves, likely in mid-to-late October. Drive past some local forested areas until you spot a horde of green-leafed bushes mixed in with all the trees. Find a place to stop, walk into the woods, and examine the still-green honeysuckle bushes you have just found.

  This is THE ENEMY, which you are now sworn to destroy at all hazards. If you are reading this in winter, keep an eye on some local deciduous woods. As spring approaches, you will notice some areas where, sure enough, a horde of bushes have leafed out beneath a stand of still-bare trees. This, again, is THE ENEMY, the bush honeysuckle. Study it, remember it, and hurry home. If you find it on your property or even in your neighborhood, the time for action has arrived

HOW TO DEFEAT THE BUSH HONEYSUCKLE

 HOW TO DEFEAT THE BUSH HONEYSUCKLE

  There are four basic methods to destroy THE ENEMY:

1. Cut them down and pull or cut their sprouts until the roots run out of reserves.
2. Poison them with herbicides.
3. Dig them out of the ground.
4. Pop them out with a Honeysuckle Popper.

  Method  #1 requires both patience and attention to detail, as sprouts may appear out of a stump for months, especially if allowed to grow to any substantial length, thereby replenishing the reserves stored in the roots. This method is recommended for folks that can return to the stumps at least every two weeks until the stump dies.  Small shoots rub off easily by hand.  It takes at least 2 months.  You can mark the stumps with those little orange flags on a wire so they are readily visible. This helps find them after new vegetation grows and helps prevent tripping over a hidden stump.  The best thing about this method is its free, the second best is it requires no herbicides.

  Method #2 involves soaking the freshly cut stump with roundup and will kill the bastards if correctly employed, but still leaves their stumps cluttering up the landscape.  Use 20% concentration roundup or generic equivalent (glysophate) and apply it liberally to the cambium layer next to the bark immediately after sawing. You do not need to apply it to the woody part. Mark the stumps with the little flags to deter tripping over them later.  They last a long time, but after a couple years they rot out enough to pop out.  

  Method #3, Dig 'Em Up. Small ones, up to maybe an inch in diameter at the base, can be pulled out of the ground after a rain or when the ground is soft. Anything larger requires digging. Fortunately honeysuckles do not sprout from the buried side roots, so these can be left underground. But the crown, which is all the main trunks and the root ball just under the ground, must be extracted to insure the success of the enterprise. This may be accomplished with a shovel on relatively small specimens. If you run into trouble using a shovel, a mattock can work wonders. It can break off all but the thickest, meanest roots, and also provides some leverage to pry the crown upwards.  If you like doing back-breaking work laced with bouts of cursing and frustration and resulting in little success, you’ll like this method. Ben there, done that.

  If you do not have access to a bulldozer, you might want to consider a tool designed specifically for the destruction of THE ENEMY, the Honeysuckle Popper.

 Method #4, A Honeysuckle Popper will give you leverage beyond the wildest dreams of any mere mattock-wielding yard ape. That is what it is designed for. And it is just as good for the smaller specimens, too. Once you get used to using a Honeysuckle Popper, you would no sooner go into battle against THE ENEMY without it than would Patton confront the Panzers without his tanks. Try it, you'll like it (where have I heard that before?). Have fun. Exterminate THE ENEMY. Save native plants. Preserve natural habitats. Leave the mosquitoes lonely and hungry. Be proud of yourself.

In short, get a Honeysuckle Popper and raise a little Hell. 

  Sincerely yours,

Dave Barrett

Honeysuckle Exterminator, & Proud of it

No matter WHAT, you've got to KILL those honeysuckles and buckthorn and all those other invasive bushes too, before they destroy your woods and take over everything.
The popper is one good, effective tool to add to your invasives fighting toolbox.