Coral Honeysuckle Easy to Propagate with Cuttings

One of my earliest botanical/horticultural memories involves time spent with my dad taking cuttings of ornamental plants. Every spring, he would start several dozen new chrysanthemums from carefully overwintered stock plants. He was also fond of long yew hedges that he developed by taking numerous cuttings from just a few original shrubs in our yard. And, from time to time, both my grandmothers would propagate, via cuttings, house plants like geraniums, African violets, and Christmas cacti. But I think it was my dad’s comparatively larger scale operation that fascinated me; with just a little effort, a single shrub could yield dozens of brand new plants—and, with just a little ingenuity, all these new plants would be created for free! I still take great pleasure in making new plants this way. This article focuses on propagation via cuttings of the VNPS 2014 Wildflower of the Year, Lonicera sempervirens (coral honeysuckle), a topic that, one might say, takes me back to my roots