Lonicera canadensis – Northern Fly Honeysuckle – 5-Pint

The most frequently used common name for this species is “American Fly-honeysuckle.” That always seemed strange to me since the specific latin epithet is “canadensis.” So I call the species “Northern Fly-honeysuckle.” That name also reflects the fact that this is a cool climate species – we never see it growing wild around the nursery, but have to head up into the Catskills to find it. We’ve become a little hesitant to grow cool climate species in an age of global warming – how well-adapted are these species going to be in the coming decades? Will they grow well at most of our customer’s homes down here at lower elevations and valleys? It’s always been popular when we offer it, so for the moment we grow it on a small scale, partly in the hope that we humans will get our act together to stop exacerbatint the sixth great extinction.