Grassroots selection and improvement effort of Lonicera villosa (mountain fly honeysuckle)

General Fruit Growing
#1

I’m setting out on a multi-year journey of locating, propagating and ultimately selecting improved lines of Lonicera villosa (aka Mountain Fly Honeysuckle); the North American edible blue honeysuckle.

I’m starting this thread to both document my efforts and start the discussion around this species as a whole.

There has been some discussion of it in the past on the forum:

Some helpful links to get us started:

https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/lonicera/villosa/?pile=woody-angiosperms

https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home/plantProfile?symbol=lovi

Where I stand today with the project:

I am in the very early stages of the project. Which is mainly researching and acquiring germplasm. I have a trip planned for Downeast and Central Maine this spring/early summer to acquire propagules from several different wild populations (the app iNaturalist has been a very helpful tool in planning out my search area).

I have also contacted and been in communications with a professor @ UMaine who has worked with the species and they have been very helpful in this initial planning phase of the project. They have also agreed to collaborate with me on the project and provide and trade propagules this spring.

If any members here know of any local plants and would like to send me propogules it would be very much appreciated. The more the merrier!

Goals of the project:

Phase 1- locate and obtain local propagules, so that I may propagate and offer wild type plants to the general public. To my knowledge, no nursery is currently carrying the species in their offerings (if you know of any please let me know!)

Phase 2- evaluate and breed improved lines of L. villosa

The rough breeding plan is as follows:

Step 1: acquire germplasm and grow it out

Step 2: evaluate wild types and propagate best specimens for sale to public

Step 3: establish an open pollinated breeding block and save seed once fruiting.

Step 4: plant out several hundred seedlings from the breeding block.

Step 5: evaluate F1 seedlings (for flavor, vigor and disease resistance) and create intentional crosses from best possible parents

Step 6: grow out and evaluate F2 seedlings once fruiting

Step 7: name and release best specimens from the F2 group

Step 8: repeat previous steps to improve best lines

Why bother?

  1. To make wild type plants more readily available to backyard growers.

  2. I believe there to be a real potential in the flavor of the fruit, flavor that may potentially compete with the best haskap cultivars - Dr. Bors of canadian haskap breeding fame says this about L. villosa (which he spent great time procuring all over canada for the hybridization efforts going on @ the U of SK): “A very exciting quality of the wild Canadian fruit was that almost all of them tasted good! This is in startling contrast to Russian reports that good tasting fruit was very rare (but did occur) especially in Northern Europe and North-Eastern Asia. Also it seemed that the good flavour was somewhat different than the good flavour of other breeding material. It may be that this material will be valuable for enhancing the taste of future cultivars.”

  3. There is also the elephant in the room that should be addressed. Maine has listed the Haskap (Lonicera caerulea) on the invasive plant “watch list”. This list does not inhibit the sale of Haskap currently, but this may be a sign of things to come with this species. I intend to get ahead of this, and select for a “fully native” line of edible blue honeysuckle so that there is a viable alternative for growers in my state and others where this may become a problem.

  4. For the fun of it!

I am fully aware of the time commitment necessary for such an endeavor, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and every great project needs to start somewhere…might as well be now! I’ll continue to document my progress as things are underway.

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#2

I live your enthusiasm, it’s inspiring.

1 Like
#3

I love that you’re doing this. After looking through hundreds of observations for L. villosa on iNaturalist, I realized that the real challenge is going to be in finding good productivity traits. Despite many specimens having decent flower production, not one observation of them in fruit show a specimen remotely worth cultivating on account of low berry yields. I looked at the locations of the most productive plants and the best looking specimens (in terms of productivity) were exclusively located well north of the border into Canada (not great yields mind you, just the best I could find).

I don’t say this to discourage you. I’d love you to succeed. If it’s actually quite common for them to taste good then you really can just focus on selecting for productivity which does simplify things. I suspect even something as simple as collecting specimens from opposite ends of their natural range (N,S, E & W) and then intercrossing them will give you some “hybrid vigor” and potential for new genetic combinations which hadn’t been possible in the wild as fringe populations developed divergent genetic traits from each other.

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#4

Yes, productivity in the wild does seem to be low and will have to be at the top of the selection list. In my research and conversations it seems that at least some of the low productivity is due to growing conditions. L. villosa is not a vigorous grower making it a bit susceptible to competition, and it’s not all that shade tolerant. Where it carves out it’s niche is often the edges of bogs and waterways (or in the lower canopy densities of the Canadian boreal forest as you suggest), being very tolerant of wet feet (even when compared to other lonicera, the U of SK had severely flooded fields one year, and reported every selection but the native villosa suffering from severe yellowing of leaves) and lower pH. Although as you know, just because that’s where it competes best, doesn’t mean that’s where it grows to its full potential. When specimens are found in more fertile upland environs they seem to be larger specimens. My hope is getting a bunch of different accessions growing in good fertile growing conditions where their full genetic potential can be realized…then go from there. I do agree that trying to get genetically diverse populations into the breeding blocks will be key. One major thing the species has going for it is a very non homogenous gene pool it seems. I remain optimistic, but it is a giant unknown until I start working with the plants.

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#5

I concur with your observations that where plants are best able to compete and survive in the wild isn’t necessarily the conditions they prefer if given better opportunities. Many of the pictures I found show plants blooming quite well, but I never saw pictures with abundant fruit set. It’s possible that many local populations are lacking genetic diversity or are possibly clonal due to their sprawling/self cloning habit (if I’m not mistaken in observing that). If this is the case, getting diverse genetics together might greatly increase pollination success!

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#6

It may also be possible that some local wildlife is willing to eat them in an underripe state, meaning you rarely get photos of wild specimens with as many fruit as were initially set. And to further speculate, maybe the more northern part of the range is beyond the range of whatever bird or small mammal is the culprit.

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#7

LKHAGVASUREN-DISSERTATION-2022-1.pdf (3.2 MB)

Good read for those interested in this plant/project.

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