coral beauty

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Another hummingbird favorite is now in bloom. Trumpet honeysuckle (a.k.a. coral honeysuckle, or for you botanical purists: Lonicera sempervirens) is a native vine that is ideally suited for ruby-throated hummingbirds. 

It has showy nectar-rich red-to-coral flowers arranged in terminal clusters. The color is right, and the long, slender tubular flowers seem especially designed for the birds’ equally long bill and tongue. This is a great example of a plant and bird that work together, each perfectly suited to the other. Simpatico.The hummers get nectar, the flower gets pollinated. Quid pro quo.

This native honeysuckle is a twining, trailing woody vine with a long flowering season that will last well into the summer.

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Hummm.

Much to the delight of the local ruby-throated hummingbirds, the trumpet honeysuckle, a.k.a. coral honeysuckle, growing near the Visitor Center at Ijams is loaded with flowers this spring. Loaded. A dizzying number of portals for a busy hummer to pause and sip, pause and sip, pause and sip. All day long.

Although it looks tropical, this is a native vine. The tiny shimmering, emerald green hummingbirds (they only weigh the equivalent of two dimes) also have a torrid, exotic nature as witnessed by Henry David himself:

"There, along with me in the deep, wild swamp, above the andromeda, amid the spruce. Its hum was heard afar at first, like that of a large bee, bringing a larger summer. This sight and sound would make me think I was in the tropics." [I this case, Thoreau is referring to andromeda the plant, not the galaxy.]

- Henry David Thoreau, journal entry dated: 17 May 1856.


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