Back in 1597, writing in his Great Herbal or Generall Historie of Plantes, the herbalist John Gerard observed that " “Wood-binde or Hony-suckle climeth up aloft, having long slender woody branches........oftentimes winding it selfe so straight and hard about, that it leaveth its print upon those things so wrapped”...........
... just like this honeysuckle, growing in Hollingside Wood in Durham, is doing. It's climbing up a young rowan and the end result looks like a life-or-death contest between two writhing serpents.
The tightly coiled honeysuckle has scarred the rowan trunk but as the tree trunk expands it's beginning to grow over its strangler....
.... and lower down, near the base of the tree, the bark has almost completely healed over the top of the honeysuckle's stem. Give it a few more years and the honeysuckle stem will be absorbed into the lower part of host trunk entirely - a climber inside its host. So who is strangling whom?
The tree is struggling but the honeysuckle is thriving - and coming into leaf nicely.
For more on honeysuckle, click here.
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