Bush Honeysuckle in Ohio:
How to Identify It

How to Identify Bush Honeysuckle

Ohio State University Extension's fact sheet F-68 names the three most common bush honeysuckles in Ohio: Amur (Lonicera maackii), Morrow (Lonicera morrowii) and Tartarian (Lonicera tatarica), plus Bella, a hybrid of the last two. All are upright, arching shrubs, commonly 6 to 20 feet tall, that form dense thickets and block sunlight from reaching the forest floor. For control they can be treated as one group.

1. 1Opposite leaves. Leaves grow in pairs directly across from each other on the stem. This is one of the most reliable field identifiers because most native Ohio shrubs have alternate leaf arrangement. Each leaf is small and oval, with a pointed tip and a smooth edge.
2. 2Tubular flowers. Blooms appear in May and June. Amur honeysuckle starts white and fades to yellow. Morrow honeysuckle starts white and fades to pink. Both have a strong, sweet fragrance that draws pollinators away from native species.
3. 3Red berries in fall. Clusters of bright red, translucent berries ripen in September and October. Each berry contains seeds that birds eat and deposit across your property and beyond. A single mature plant produces thousands of berries per season.
4. 4Peeling bark on older stems. Mature honeysuckle stems develop a shaggy, peeling bark that distinguishes them from native dogwood and viburnum. The stems are hollow if you cut a cross-section — native look-alikes have solid pith.
5. 5November test. The easiest identification method: drive your property in late November after native trees have dropped their leaves. Every green patch in the understory is bush honeysuckle. It holds its leaves 2–3 weeks longer than anything native, making the invasion visible from a distance. Buckthorn also stays green late along Northeast Ohio woodland edges, so confirm with the hollow-stem test before you decide which one you have.

Why Honeysuckle Dominates Ohio

Bush honeysuckle has three biological advantages that make it nearly impossible for native plants to compete:

Extended growing season. Honeysuckle leafs out 2–3 weeks before native trees in spring and holds its leaves 2–3 weeks later in fall. During those windows, it captures sunlight that native understory plants need to photosynthesize and build root reserves. Native wildflowers, seedlings, and shrubs that depend on early spring or late fall light are starved out gradually.

Prolific seed production. A single mature honeysuckle plant produces thousands of berries that birds eat and carry off, so every songbird on your property is spreading it to new ground. The fruit is plentiful but poor food: F-68 notes it is rich in carbohydrates but lacks the high-fat, nutrient-rich content most native plants give migrating birds.

Dense monoculture formation. Once established, honeysuckle forms a closed canopy at the shrub layer that eliminates all native understory. No native wildflowers, no tree seedlings, no ground cover — just a bare forest floor under a wall of honeysuckle.

Where It Turns Up First

Because birds carry the seed, honeysuckle arrives where birds perch and feed: along fence rows, at the edge of the lawn where it meets the woods, under power lines and along creek banks. Any gap where light reaches the ground, from a fallen tree to a cleared lot, is colonised within a few seasons. That is why it so often looks as if the woods are closing in from the edges: they are, a few feet a year.

Cutting it without a plan makes it spread faster, not slower. A shrub cut at the base answers with a ring of new stems from the crown, and a mown thicket comes back denser than it was.

Found It? Here Is What to Do

For a few seedlings or small shrubs, our guide on how to get rid of honeysuckle yourself walks through each scale, from pulling seedlings to the follow-up calendar that stops the resprouts.

Where it has become the understory, our honeysuckle removal service clears the thicket mechanically and mulches it in place, keeps every tree worth keeping, and comes back to cut the regrowth while it is small. Where the stand worth saving is the mature canopy above it, that work is woodland restoration.

Not sure what you are looking at? The Geauga Park District's naturalists answer plant identification questions, and Cleveland Metroparks runs a standing invasive plant program across its reservations. Where honeysuckle has moved into an old field rather than the woods, the thorny trees coming up alongside it are often Callery (Bradford) pear.