Photo: Edwin Hale Lincoln, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Mountain Fly Honeysuckle

Lonicera villosa

Also called Lonicera caerulea var. villosa.

A small native shrub of northern bogs and wet woods, a wild relative of the haskap, with paired pale yellow flowers and edible blue berries.

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Saplings ship bare-root or in a pot, usually 12 to 18 inches tall, in the dormant season, and their height and age are stated here with the price, once available.

We grow it as saplings and seed. One email when it is listed with prices, and nothing else. Or ask, and we reply with what is ready now. Live plants ship February to May and October to November.

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EdibleWildlife valueTolerates wet soilTolerates shade

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 1–5 ft
USDA zones: 3–6
Growth rate: Slow
Flowers: May to June
Fruit: Berries, June to August
First crop: 3 to 5 years
Mature spread: 5 ft
Sun: Full, Part, Shade
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: The forest understory, swamps and wet flats
Native range: 12 states, north and west to Minnesota and south to Ohio
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Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin
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Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Mountain fly honeysuckle is a small native shrub of northern bogs, fens and wet woods. Botanists often treat it as a North American variety of the haskap, or honeyberry, the blue honeysuckle grown for fruit. Unlike American fly honeysuckle, whose paired berries stay separate and turn red, each pair of its flowers grows into a single blue berry. It is seldom sold, since its wild stands are small and sparse. Plant it at the wet edge of a pond or in a bog garden, where it can stay low and spread slowly.

Size, growth and what to expect

It grows slowly, 6 inches to a foot a year in our growth estimator, and in one trial in pots it reached a quarter of the height of the haskap grown beside it. It makes a compact shrub 1 to 5 feet tall, with peeling, coppery bark on older stems. It wants a cool, moist site and is a plant for northern gardens.

Pairs of pale yellow, funnel-shaped flowers, a third to half an inch long, hang from the leaf axils in May and June. Each pair grows into one oblong blue berry about three eighths of an inch long, dusted with a waxy bloom, ripening from early summer into August. The berries come in small numbers, and birds eat them.

It grows wild across Canada from Labrador and Newfoundland west to Alberta, and south into New England, New York, Pennsylvania and the Great Lakes states. Its home is bogs, fens, swamps and wet woods. Pennsylvania lists it as endangered, and it is gone from Ohio.

How to grow Mountain Fly Honeysuckle

Mountain fly honeysuckle grows in part shade, sun or shade, and it does best in the dappled shade of a cool, moist garden. It wants ground that stays moist or wet, such as a bog, a fen or the edge of a pond, and it takes rocky or peaty soil. Set plants 3 feet apart and keep them 3 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Clean the seed from the blue berries and sow it outdoors in fall, a quarter inch deep. For a spring sowing, chill the seed damp in the refrigerator for two to three months first. Softwood cuttings taken in late June root well.

Water whenever the soil starts to dry through the first two summers. Stems that touch the ground may root, so a plant slowly widens into a patch.

Its relative the haskap sets few berries with its own pollen and far more with pollen from another plant, so plant two or more from different parents for fruit. Bumble bees work the flowers. The berries are edible but tart, and birds take them too.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

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