What pops into your mind’s eye when you think of honeysuckle? Is it a fragrant vine or is it an arching shrub that makes good hedges and borders?

If you answered yes to either question you’d be right. The honeysuckle, or Caprifoliaceae, plant family can sometimes look like a collection of seemingly unrelated species: some twining climbers, some shrubs and more than a few common bedding plants.

Chances are you’d be able to spot a member of the orchid, or Orchidaceae, family without a hitch.  Orchids are just so exotic looking, even though you can find over 40 native orchids growing here in very unexotic Washington state. The same goes for a member of the sunflower family: The arrangement of ray and disk flowers in one flower head is a dead giveaway to its family ties.

But try to peg all the members of Caprifoliaceae as related without relying on sometimes very small or obscure biological or morphological traits and you may throw your hands up and decide to take a long nap instead. I don’t blame you.

Yet this is one family whose members are probably well represented in your garden. If not, you’ll easily find them along the highway or in a nearby woods.

The genus Lonicera alone has about 180 species, including common shrubs as well as those twining vines I was telling you about. You may have Lonicera nitida, commonly called box honeysuckle or boxleaf  honeysuckle. It grows to about 4 -5 feet wide and tall and has small cream colored flowers that come in pairs. “Red Tips” is an attractive cultivar with – you guessed it – red tips. Lonicera pileata, or privet honeysuckle, is a lower growing species that can fill in as a ground cover. Both have “pokey” branches that arch up and out.

One of our native Loniceras is Lonicera involucrata, or  twinbeary honeysuckle. It’s a scrubby shrub with yellow tubular flowers that come in pairs followed by black berries.

The vining Lonicera include our native Lonicera  ciliosa, or Western trumpet honeysuckle. Some of us unashamedly let it vine up our Douglas firs so that we can enjoy a wall of orange flowers and delicious fragrance in the spring.  On the other hand, I don’t advise you let Japanese honeysuckle get a toe hold. This introduced species with white to yellow flowers is considered a noxious weed.

Other common members of the Caprifoliaceae family are the native snowberry, the Weigelagenus of flowering deciduous shrubs, good, old scabiosa and valerian.  And by valerian I mean the authentic medicinal herb, that has white flowers and a very strong smelling root with sedative properties,  as well as red valerian, that is also known as red Jupiter’s beard.

Did you know for a long time elderberries and viburnums were in the Caprifoliaceae family too? Modern genetic research, however, led plant taxonomists to set them apart in their own plant family: Adoxaceae.

Well, I guess it isn’t the first time someone’s been disowned because their genetics were suspect.