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Lonicera japonica 'Halliana' (Japanese Honeysuckle) – A very vigorous vine often used as a groundcover that will quickly cover large areas - as much as 30 feet. The fragrant cream white flowers (appearing spring through fall) that change to an apricot color with age.
Plant in full to part sun and irrigate occasionally to regularly. It evergreen in our coastal California climate but cold hardy to USDA Zone 4 and noted as tolerating temperatures as low as -25F. This widely used groundcover benefits from pruning and thinning which can be done with a weed whip or lawn mower.
Lonicera japonica hails from Southeast Asia where it grows on forest margins in China, Japan, and Korea. The name for the genus honors Adam Lonicer, a 16th century German mathematician, physician and botanist and the specific epithet references where Carl Peter Thunberg first collected in Nagasaki and described the pant in 1784 in Flora Japonica. This cultivar differs from the species by the more deeply divided upper petal lip of the flowers and the name honors George Rogers Hall (1820-1899), an American medical doctor living in Japan. Dr. Hall founded a garden in Yokohama and shipped many plants to the US that were new to cultivation.
Lonicera japonica 'Halliana' was once one of the most commonly grown vine and groundcover plants grown in the California nursery industry but seems less common these days. listed in his Dates of Introduction of Trees and Shrubs to California (written in 1964 for the Landscape Horticulture Dept at UC Davis) as first being introduced into California by R.D. Fox from his Santa Clara Valley Nursery in 1884. Though seeming not to be a problem in California, Lonicera japonica has gained noxious invasive weed status in many areas and is now banned in several New England states. We grew this useful plant from 1979 until 2010 and continue to grow the similar but less vigorous and slightly yellower Lonicera confusa as well as the large Giant Burmese Honeysuckle Lonicera hildebrandiana.
This information about Lonicera japonica 'Halliana' displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.
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