Leaves: ovate or oval, acute or acuminate at the apex, narrowed at the base; peduncles axillary; bracts foliaceous, ovate; bractlets also large, at length surrounding the fruit. Flowers: in pairs, yellow; corolla pubescent, funnel-form, the limb five-lobed, the lobes short, little spreading; stamens and style slightly exserted. Fruit: berries nearly black.

This is one of the small-flowered Honeysuckles which grow in the form of a bushy shrub. It bears yellow funnel-form twin blossoms, terminating the long slender peduncles which spring from the axils of the leaves. These blossoms are conspicuously involucred (hence the common name) by large broad leaf-like bracts, which are green in the flowering season and turn a warm reddish colour in autumn, when surrounding the fruit. The five stamens protrude slightly beyond the corolla, but the style is much exserted, and is tipped by a large anther.

The Involucred Fly Honeysuckle is a straggling shrub, growing from two to six feet high; the leaves are long-shaped and have hairy margins, and when in fruit the reddish-black berries are joined together in pairs. It is not a plant that is likely to attract the traveller's interest, for it is noticeable only by reason of its rich luxuriant foliage, since the flowers are small and the berries quite dark in hue.

Loniccra utahensis, or Bush Fly Honeysuckle, grows from three to five feet high, and is branching and very bushy. The leaves are oblong and bright green and have wavy smooth margins. The pale yellow flowers, whose corollas are cleft into two lips, grow in pairs on long slender peduncles from the axils of the leaves, and are subtended by small bracts, in which latter respect they differ materially from the Involucred Fly Honeysuckle, which has very large broad bracts. The fruit consists of egg-shaped berries, which are more or less joined together and are of a lovely translucent scarlet colour, "Like a double cherry, seeming parted."

Plate LXII

Bush Fly Honeysuckle (Lonicera utahensis)

Bush Fly Honeysuckle (Lonicera utahensis)