Like bees take to honeysuckle

The Chinese honeysuckle (Lonicera giraldii) is flowering in the National Botanical Garden of Georgia in Tbilisi. An invasive species of honeysuckle, it is rarely offered for sale in other countries. But here in the Botanical Garden of Georgia, it is attracting plenty of bees.

The evergreen climber has soft hairy and velvety leaves and stems with yellow clusters of flowers that bloom in June and July in the Northern Hemisphere.

It is native to the Sichuan and Shensi provinces of China.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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