Honeysuckle Removal at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

A tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) resting on an Amur honeysuckle bush (Lonicera maackii) at Seip Mound Group.

NPS photo/A.Smith

At Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, two of our most invasive plants are members of the honeysuckle family. Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) and Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) occupy the largest amount of land in our park compared to any of our other invasive plant species.

Honeysuckles were first introduced to the United States in the early 1900’s. At the time the only things people knew about these foreign plants were that they produced sweet-smelling flowers and helped to prevent soil erosion. It wasn’t until the honeysuckles began to spread far beyond their origin, that people realized these pretty plants had a much darker side.

Honeysuckles work together to aggressively outgrow and crowd out slower growing plants. The shrubby Amur honeysuckle grows upward to shade out shorter plants, while the viney Japanese honeysuckle grows along the ground, choking out whatever is in its path.

Honeysuckles produce bright red berries that are eaten by birds. Once eaten, the seeds pass through the bird’s digestive systems and are released through their droppings. This spreads seeds much further than the plants could on their own. These berries are like candy for the birds, being high in sugar and with little nutritional value. Just like with people, eating too many of these “sweets” can make the birds sick over time.

In the summer of 2019, our park biologists treated over 55 acres for honeysuckle, only making a small dent in the total area controlled by these "tyrannical botanicals". It may seem hopeless but, even removing honeysuckle from a small portion of our park, can create an important refuge for native plants.

So what can you do to join the fight against honeysuckle? Learning to identify and remove, Amur and Japanese honeysuckle in your own back yard can go a long way to helping prevent them from spreading to new areas. If we all do our part to remove, and keep out honeysuckle from where we live, it will have tremendous benefits for the natural world!