A truly amazing shrub. While not the most attractive growth habit, it offers the winter/early spring garden several weeks of intense, delicious, wafting, pervasive, sweet, addictive perfume. In a good year, flowers will last 6-8 weeks and are impervious to rain, snow, frost, ice, hail and wind. In spite of the often rangy growth habit, try to prune as little as possible so you will not sacrifice any of next year's glorious blooms.

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Honeybees make the best tasting honey when feeding on the nectar of these flowers.

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I agree about the scent: It's powerfull flowery-lemon to me. I do cut mine back as soon as it stops flowering and still get plenty of blooms each year.

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This Winter Honeysuckle is native to eastern China. I have only seen a few specimens at Morton Arboretum in northeast Illinois and at Tyler Arboretum in southeast Pennsylvania. It is a rare plant in North America. It is not known to really escape cultivation much and become a horrible invasive thing like some other shrub honeysuckles from Eurasia. It is noted as having wonderfully lemon-like fragrant flowers in late winter and early spring. Its dark red berries hide under the foliage. It does not get autumn coloration. It has sort of a messy habit.

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