How Can You Fight Against Invasive Honeysuckle?
Nashville Tree Advice: Three-Minute Read
Advice from Michael Davie
A board member of NTCC, Michael Davie is a board certified master arborist with Bartlett Tree Experts in Nashville.
Invasive Honeysuckle’s Early Leaves
January 31, 2020
You may be driving around Nashville sometime early this spring, before the trees have really begun to leaf out, and notice in the understory of woods and in fence lines all around town some fresh, light green leaves flushing before any others. The more you look around, the more you’ll see: it’s honeysuckle bush (Lonicera maackii).
Invasive Bush Honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii)
Photo Credit: Warner Park Nature Center
While honeysuckle may have been around as long as you remember, it wasn’t always around, because it was introduced into this country in the 1800s, where it quickly established and spread as a highly invasive plant, especially in certain areas like Middle Tennessee. While you may love the smell, and you may remember as a child pulling out the center of the flower stem (the style and the stigma) to get a drop of sweet nectar, this species is a bad actor. It’s taken over the understory completely in many areas of Middle Tennessee and other parts of the country, crowding and shading out the native species that would have grown there naturally in the past.
In most wooded areas, early in the season there would be a burst of a wide variety of low, flowering spring ephemerals, among more sparse and spaced native shrubs like coralberry or spicebush. Instead we have hundreds of thousands of the same species of shrub crowding out everything else, and dominating the entire landscape over vast swaths. The spread of honeysuckle has led to a decline in diversity of not only the plants that would otherwise be living there, but also of all the other species that have co-evolved with those plants in a natural system. I hear some people talk about the fact that honeysuckle bushes provide food with their berries and habitat with their dense growth; there’s truth to that, but it’s food and habitat only for some, at the expense of many, many others.
It’s not that I spite honeysuckle, or any other invasive species; they are just doing what they evolved to do: grow, live, survive, and propagate. Without the natural checks and balances that evolved with them in their native ranges, they are simply too successful! Emerald ash borer is a minor pest of stressed trees in their native range, but here they kill every ash tree they come into contact with because they have no natural checks. The list of damaging invasive species is depressingly long and getting longer, in a losing game of whack-a-mole.
Invasive Honeysuckle in Bloom (Lonicera maackii)
So, what can you do? Well, you can’t get rid of all the honeysuckle in Tennessee. You can’t get rid of all the honeysuckle in Nashville. It’s hard to even keep your yard free of it! But you can work to keep it in check, at least in areas. You can make some places clear, and keep them that way. But, it’s hard work, so get ready. And I hate to say it, but the most effective way to get rid of most invasive plants, besides just cutting them down, involves the use of herbicides. Cutting honeysuckle slows it down, but the plant will sprout new stems and before long you’ve got your bush again. It is possible to dig up the stumps, but that is a tremendous amount of work, especially if you are dealing with larger bushes or a thicket of hundreds or even thousands of bushes. In small areas you can go the non-toxic route of smothering the cut stumps with black plastic or deep layers of cardboard to block the light, but you have to do it for months and months to kill the plant.
Herbicides are the most effective way to control honeysuckle for longer term and allow other plants to come back in. Please don’t try the home remedies like vinegar or Epsom salts. Those products damage soil and soil microbes much more than most herbicides! If you use herbicides, carefully follow the label and use the appropriate protective gear. The same when you’re out there cutting plants with sharp tools! Check out this guide published by The Nature Conservancy on how to use herbicides safely for controlling invasive plants.
Check out the Southeast Exotic Pest Plant Council Invasive Plant Manual entry for bush honeysuckle. Better yet, join up with others at a weed wrangle this year! You’ll learn a lot while making a difference with other. Find out where at: weedwrangle.org
If you can keep some areas free of the honeysuckle and let the natives come back in, you may be surprised at what comes back! Hopefully it’s not privet, but that’s another story. You can accelerate the restoration by planting natives: SE-EPPC Landscaping With Natives Plants. It's not an easy endeavor, but it can be immensely gratifying to rehabilitate and enjoy the natural beauty of Middle Tennessee that’s been lost in so many areas. It really is a beautiful area we live in.
Native Plant Nurseries:
Grow Wild: Local Tennessee Nursery, Musser Forest: Wholesale Mail Order Tree Saplings Nursery, Rock Bridge Trees: Local Tennessee Nursery
Invasive Honeysuckle Fruit (Lonicera maackii)