Lonicera reticulata / Grape Honeysuckle

Planted in 2013

This is 'Kintzley's Ghost', a really unusual honeysuckle vine that I first saw at the Denver Botanical Garden.

                                   Denver Botanic Garden   (Landscape Architect Jocelyn H. Chilvers)

Flat white discs covered a small vine, and although they appeared green tinged in the shade of the pergola, in the light the round bracts looked like a eucalyptus, very powdery silver, and arranged stiffly up and down the trailing vine stems.

I came home and did some research on this grape honeysuckle, and found this great write up by the Dirt Diva, Mary Ann Newcomer at Gardens of the Wild Wild West.

I got it at a nursery in Ft. Collins, CO. Greg took me there when I was out visiting him in August, 2013, and I brought the little one gallon pot back on the airplane in my carryon bag.

It was planted in late August, and did not do anything for the rest of the season. Vines sleep the first year before creeping the second year and then leaping in year three.

9/24/14

In 2015 it came in beautifully and climbed the trellis exactly as I wanted it to.

5/24/15

It bloomed at Memorial Day -- such funny bright yellow flowers surrounded by the round bracts.

5/30/15

By mid summer it was growing a little wilder, and later in August it was even more rampant. This will need some pruning control throughout the season.

7/16/15

The bracts did not turn ghostly silver-white as I had expected. They are pretty and unusual, but stayed a glaucous green.  I'll be interested to see if the silver color develops in other seasons; it was clearly a feature of the vine I saw at Denver Botanical Garden.

10/15/15