Woodbine anyone?

This is a honeysuckle in our garden, and it was awash with hover flies this evening. They seemed to be queuing up rather patiently to await their turn on the pollen.

I didn't realise until a few minutes ago that the honeysuckle (or woodbine) was voted the "County Flower of Warwickshire" in a poll by the wild plant conservation society in 2002.

It has also been around for hundreds of years, and Shakespeare (amongst others) used the flower in his plays:-

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act 2, Scene 1. Lines 254-8)


He chose the woodbine for its perfume, in Titania's dream. Strange then that a cigarette should have been named after it?