May Appeal 2026
Please help keep TSO growing!
IDS Trees and Shrubs Online depends on generous donations to continue to make reliable information on hardy woody plants freely available to everyone, everywhere.
If you haven’t already, please consider donating to our May Appeal. If everyone who uses TSO during May 2026 gives just £10, we would cover our costs for a whole year, enabling us to accelerate our work!
Lonicera purpurascens
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Lonicera purpurascens' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Other taxa in genus
- Lonicera acuminata
- Lonicera alberti
- Lonicera alpigena
- Lonicera altmannii
- Lonicera × americana
- Lonicera angustifolia
- Lonicera × brownii
- Lonicera caerulea
- Lonicera caprifolium
- Lonicera caucasica
- Lonicera chaetocarpa
- Lonicera chrysantha
- Lonicera ciliosa
- Lonicera dioica
- Lonicera etrusca
- Lonicera ferdinandi
- Lonicera flava
- Lonicera fragrantissima
- Lonicera giraldii
- Lonicera griffithii
- Lonicera gynochlamydea
- Lonicera × heckrottii
- Lonicera henryi
- Lonicera hildebrandiana
- Lonicera hirsuta
- Lonicera hispida
- Lonicera iberica
- Lonicera implexa
- Lonicera involucrata
- Lonicera japonica
- Lonicera korolkowii
- Lonicera ligustrina
- Lonicera maackii
- Lonicera maximowiczii
- Lonicera microphylla
- Lonicera morrowii
- Lonicera nervosa
- Lonicera nigra
- Lonicera periclymenum
- Lonicera × purpusii
- Lonicera pyrenaica
- Lonicera quinquelocularis
- Lonicera reticulata
- Lonicera rupicola
- Lonicera ruprechtiana
- Lonicera sempervirens
- Lonicera setifera
- Lonicera similis
- Lonicera splendida
- Lonicera tangutica
- Lonicera tatarica
- Lonicera × tellmanniana
- Lonicera tomentella
- Lonicera tragophylla
- Lonicera trichosantha
- Lonicera webbiana
- Lonicera xylosteum
- Lonicera yunnanensis
A sturdy bush 5 to 8 ft high; young shoots stiff, purplish, covered with a soft, fine down. Leaves oblong or somewhat obovate, tapered or bluntish at the apex, rounded or tapered at the base, 1 to 2 in. long, 1⁄2 to 1 in. wide, dull green above, grey beneath, downy on both surfaces but especially beneath; stalk 1⁄6 to 1⁄4 in, long, downy, purplish. Flowers in pairs from the leaf-axils on a slender downy stalk, 1⁄3 in. or more long. Corolla 3⁄5 in. long, with five short nearly equal lobes, which are purple; the tube paler, hairy, funnel-shaped, and protruded at the base; bracts awl-shaped. Berries more or less united, blue-black.
Native of the Himalaya up to altitudes of 13,000 ft, and very hardy; introduced to Kew in 1884. A neat bush with a purplish cast, but of little merit.