What is Japanese honeysuckle?

Japanese honeysuckle identification matters because Pennsylvania has a native honeysuckle vine you’ll want to keep, and an invasive one you won’t. Japanese honeysuckle came from eastern Asia and was widely planted for its fragrance and for erosion control. It escaped and is now listed by PA DCNR as an invasive plant.

It’s a woody, twining vine that spreads two ways. Long runners creep along the ground and root at every joint, and birds carry the seeds from its black berries to new spots. Over time it forms a thick mat that shades out low plants and twists around young trees and shrubs.

It isn’t on the state noxious weed list, but it causes real problems at woods edges and in overgrown yards.

Japanese honeysuckle identification: key features

• Growth: a twining vine that climbs fences and trees or sprawls into dense ground cover.
• Leaves: oval, 1 to 3 inches long, in opposite pairs. Mature leaves have smooth edges; young spring leaves can be lobed. Leaves and stems are often slightly hairy.
• Flowers: tubular and two-lipped, about an inch or so long, in pairs where the leaves join the stem. They open white and turn creamy yellow, so you see both colors at once. They’re very fragrant.
• Berries: small, glossy and black, ripening in fall.
• Bark: older stems are brown, hollow and peel in shreddy strips.
• Winter: in much of PA the leaves stay green well into winter, which makes it easy to spot in a bare woods edge.

Where Japanese honeysuckle grows in Pennsylvania

Japanese honeysuckle likes sun but handles shade, so it thrives along edges: where a lawn meets woods, along hedgerows and fence lines, roadsides, power-line cuts and stream banks. It’s a familiar sight in the river valleys and farm country of central PA.

In yards it often starts in a neglected corner or behind a shed and then works its way into shrub beds and up into small trees. Old farm hedgerows are a classic spot.

Japanese honeysuckle look-alikes

Coral honeysuckle (also called trumpet honeysuckle) is a native vine worth keeping. It has red or orange tubular flowers in clusters at the ends of the stems, red berries, and its upper leaves fuse into a single disk around the stem. It’s a great plant for hummingbirds.

Amur honeysuckle and the other bush honeysuckles are upright shrubs with red berries, not vines. They’re also invasive, and Amur honeysuckle is a Class B noxious weed in PA.

Oriental bittersweet is another twining invader, but its leaves alternate along the stem, and it has round yellow-and-red berries.

How to get rid of Japanese honeysuckle

Hand and mechanical. Small plants and seedlings can be pulled by hand, especially when the soil is moist. Follow each runner and pull it up, since every rooted joint can become a new plant. Unwind vines from shrubs and trees rather than ripping them, and cut climbing stems at the base so the upper vine dies. Bag or pile the debris where the runners can’t root back into soil.

Repeated mowing or cutting weakens a patch but won’t kill it. Cutting in mid to late summer and then treating the regrowth works better than cutting alone.

Cultural. Once the honeysuckle is out, fill the space. Plant native shrubs, mulch beds 2 to 3 inches deep, or establish a mowed edge so runners can’t creep back in from the woods.

Chemical. Extension services, including Penn State, list glyphosate and triclopyr for Japanese honeysuckle, used either as a foliar spray on leaves or applied to freshly cut stems. A practical trick in PA is to spray in late fall after a frost, when native plants have dropped their leaves but the honeysuckle is still green. Cut-stem treatment works any time the ground isn’t frozen and keeps spray off nearby plants. Expect follow-up treatments. Read and follow the label (the label is the law), check that the product is labeled for your site, especially near streams or wet areas, and protect desirable plants. In Pennsylvania, applying herbicide for hire requires a PA Dept. of Agriculture pesticide applicator certification, so larger areas should go to a licensed vegetation-management company.

Keeping Japanese honeysuckle from coming back

Plan on a few years. Runners you missed and seed from the birds will bring new plants, so walk the edges each spring and fall and pull new sprouts while they’re small.

Keep a clean line between the lawn and the woods. Honeysuckle loves an unmanaged edge. Replanting cleared areas with native shrubs or keeping them mowed makes a big difference.

For large tangles mixed with brush and invasive shrubs, clearing with the right machine can save a lot of hand labor. That’s where brush and tree clearing comes in.

Questions we get about japanese honeysuckle

Similar weeds

Amur HoneysuckleLonicera maackiiOriental BittersweetCelastrus orbiculatusMultiflora RoseRosa multiflora