Kamchatka honeysuckle

Family

Caprifoliaceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

2.5 m

Spread

1.6 m

Growth

fast

Lifespan

30 years

First yield

after 3 years

Hardiness

zone 3–6

Shade tolerance

light shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

semi-dry – very moist

pH

5 – 7

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: The elongated blue berries ripen very early in the year, often before strawberries, closing a gap at the start of the fruit season. They are juicy and edible raw or cooked; the juice stains deep red and can be used as a natural colouring for other dishes. They are made into jam, jelly, compote, purée, juice and fruit leather, and commercially into freeze-dried berries, cereal bars and fruit yoghurt, as well as liqueurs, fruit wines and spirits. Frozen, they either hold their shape or collapse to a purée depending on cultivar. In the European Union the species has been approved as a novel food since the end of 2018 and may be sold commercially. Flavour varies considerably by cultivar, from sweetly aromatic to distinctly bitter.

Other uses: Besides its fruit the honeyberry is useful chiefly as a shrub. At one to two metres, densely built and living for several decades, it serves as a low, low-maintenance hedge and as underplanting beneath open-crowned fruit trees, where part shade does it no harm. Because it is extremely hardy and breaks early, it fills a niche in harsh situations and north-facing gardens that little else can occupy. The deep red berry juice stains strongly and was traditionally used in eastern Europe to colour food and cloth — in the garden that mostly means your apron and the paving take on colour too.

The honeyberry is extraordinarily frost hardy, surviving to around minus 45 degrees; even open flowers tolerate roughly minus seven, which all but rules out crop loss to late frost. Conversely it needs 1,000 to 1,200 chilling hours below seven degrees and performs poorly where winters are mild. It wants rather acid ground at pH 5.5 to 6.5, moderately fertile and humus-rich; it avoids very wet, heavy soils as much as dry sands and saline substrates. Being light-demanding it needs at least six hours of sun a day, with afternoon shade helpful in warmer regions. Pollination is decisive: the plants are self-incompatible, and at least two to three genetically distinct cultivars are required. No pruning is done for the first five to seven years.

The honeyberry is propagated almost entirely vegetatively, because seedlings do not come true and the cultivar determines flavour and yield. Both hardwood cuttings taken in late winter and softwood cuttings in early summer root well, and layering succeeds by pegging down and earthing up low shoots. Older bushes can be divided. Sowing is left to breeders: the seed needs a cold period, and self-incompatibility means at least two different cultivars are required to obtain seed at all. When buying, make a point of choosing distinct cultivars, since two plants of the same one will set no fruit.

The honeyberry's wildlife value lies almost entirely in its timing. It flowers from March, in mild weather from late February, and its blossom takes light frost without damage — so it stands open exactly when bumblebee queens make their first flights and mining bees emerge, while most shrubs are still bare. Nectar and pollen are only moderate in quantity, but at that season availability counts for more than quantity. On the related blue-berried honeysuckle two wild bee species and twenty-nine caterpillar species are recorded, one of them a specialist. The early berries are so sought after that blackbirds, fieldfares and marsh tits often strip the bush before anyone else gets there — seven bird species are documented. The low, dense habit adds cover close to the ground.

Special characteristics: hardy to -45°C, flowers from March and shrugs off frost earliest fruit harvest of the year (usually before strawberries); at least 2 different cultivars needed self-sterile, no crop from a single plant; grows only 1-2m, very long-lived first pruning from year 8-10, renewal only after 20-25 years; berries highly sought by birds often a total loss without netting; berries ripen unevenly pick over several times;

Cool temperate northern hemisphere: Alps, northern Europe to East Asia. The honeyberry is a cultivated form of the blue-berried honeysuckle, whose range covers the cool temperate zone of the northern hemisphere. In Europe it centres on the Alps and their foothills: in Germany it grows wild only in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, in Austria in almost every province, in Switzerland across the Alps, Jura and Mittelland. Further occurrences lie in the Pyrenees, the Bavarian Forest and the mountains of Italy, Bulgaria and Romania. A continuous northern range runs from Sweden and Finland through the Baltic states and much of northern Russia into Ukraine. The cultivars grown for fruit derive from the Kamchatkan lineage of the Russian Far East, taken into cultivation there only in the twentieth century.

In its natural range the blue-berried honeysuckle grows in damp woodland, scrub and raised bogs, and in the krummholz zone above the treeline. It favours moist to wet, nutrient- and lime-poor raw humus soils and is regarded as a character species of acid spruce forest. Its centre lies in the montane and subalpine belt, and in the Alps it climbs to around 2,100 metres. That origin explains its behaviour in the garden: it is extremely frost hardy but wants evenly moist, rather acid ground and copes poorly with drought and limy substrates.