Hedge or Bush
Earlier this year I wrote something about the astonishingly wide popularity of Lonicera nitida, a honeysuckle shrub intro- duced (from Western Szechuan) as late as 1908. It is probably today the favourite of all hedge plants in England. It is therefore of wide interest to hear of a new Lonicera like nitida, but with larger leaves and a flatter shape and stiffer horizontal branches. It is a curious botanic fact that bushes grown from seed collected in Yunnan have both flowered and fruited freely. Those grown from Szechuan, which are to be seen at Kew, have proved sulky in this regard. The advice not to neglect L. nitida as a single bush is a hint worth taking. It often happens that when a plant is accepted as a hedge plant its individuality is forgotten. How horrible, for example, are laurels in mass and how beautiful when grown in solitary splendour in a congenial place!
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