Will honeysuckle 'strangle' a supporting shrub?

J_J_Carter

I've air-layered several honeysuckle plants and am thinking of letting them grow through shrubs like choisya. Will the twinning damage the supporting plant like an ivy could?

emiff6

It's not so much the twining that does for the support shrub, but the amount of leaf honeysuckle produces. I let one grow for 4 years over an Italian buckthorn shrub, and all the buckthorn underneath died off from lack of light.

I cut the honeysuckle out, but am left with a buckthorn that has no living branches down one side of the main stem. The trouble is, honeysuckle flowers right on the end of its 'branches', and keeps on growing and flowering all summer till the frosts, so I never chopped it back till late autumn, and by then it was too late for the buckthorn.

a1cat

I've got one growing in a pear tree and that seems to work pretty well, the pear is vigorous and so the honeysuckle doesn't overpower it.

It's right up there at the top of the tree, which used to be about 6-7 metres high but has now been chopped to about 3 metres