Sweet Spring Thing

The air has been filled with a mysterious sweet odor all week long. Scooting about, who could miss it?

It is the delicious fragrance of honey suckle blossoms in the air, everywhere!

Mostly I’ve noticed it all along the back of the shopping plaza where I scoot to get groceries to bring back to the “cottage by the mall”. Back there, where no cars roam, there is an entire line of honey suckle bushes. Just beyond that line there is a hidden creek, running down to a small secluded pond where Canadian geese often wing their way from out over my cottage yard.

So the honey suckle flourish there and their sweet smells fill the wind with childhood memories of bike rides and days spent lazing in the sun with no cares.

Out riding along a country lane, we’d stop and linger on the side of the road underneath the honey suckle bushes, their creamy yellow buds dancing delicate among the leaves and twigs.

Every kid knows to pull the petals off the stem and put the little drop of honey on your tongue. This guy figured it out years ago: Adam Lonicer, a German botanist, (10 October 1528 – 29 May 1586) who hailed from Marburg, Germany.

He was a pretty smart fellow. He taught mathematics at the University of Marburg and later went on to become a physician. In fact he became the “town physician” in Frankfurt am Main. I found that interesting as I lived there as a kid in the 1960s. Beautiful city!

Anyway, he really loved herbs and botany the most and he is the one who coined the name “honey suckle”, for obvious reasons. Honey suckle is categorized under the genus Lonicera, named for who else, Adam Lonicer.

Interestingly there are now known to be over 200 varieties of honey suckle plants in the world. Bees and hummingbirds love them and I remember loving the simple pleasure of tasting that tiny drop of nectar on my tongue as a kid many years ago.

So if you haven’t had the pleasure of sampling the nectar of the honey suckle flower, maybe it’s time to walk, bike, or scoot out
into the countryside and see what you have been missing!

Safe rides….

All photos are borrowed from the internet...too cold and wet to be out today!