Our adda spot is under the mahogany tree at Curzon Hall. The plants around it charmed us when we first started sitting there, and they still do, which is really why we keep going back. Right beside a plastered notice board there was an unfamiliar plant creeping along the ground. One day I went up close to check what kind of plant it was, and whether it really was a stranger to me.
It was a creeper all right, but the stem was quite hard. The leaves were roundish and oval, and they came out in pairs from the same point on the stem, opposite leaves in other words. One more thing caught my eye: the stem was not green but slightly reddish. I did not know it, so that day I left it where it was and walked away.
White flowers up an electric pole
Some days later I was coming in through the Curzon Hall gate when I noticed, in the garden to the left of the gate, a plant that had climbed all the way up a tall electric pole and was covered in lovely white flowers. I did not recognise the flower, so I went closer, and as soon as I did it struck me that this looked like the plant beside the mahogany tree. Does that one have flowers like these? If it is flowering here, I thought, it has probably flowered there too, and I walked straight back to the mahogany tree. Sure enough, white flowers were open there as well.
They have a sweet scent, but sweet or not it is a strong one, and once you have taken it in you do not easily forget it. The flowers grow in dense clusters. The anthers stick right out, and now and then it looks as though the flower is sitting there with its mouth wide open, ready to bite if you come too close. The things one can imagine about anything at all. I noticed something else too: within a few days the flowers turn from white to gold. Since I had never noticed the flowers before, the plant had stayed a stranger for quite a while and I had not paid it much attention, but once the flowers came I tried very hard to find out what it was.
A stranger for a whole year
None of the books I had at hand gave me its identity. I thought I would work forward from the family, but I could not even work out which family it belonged to. The internet is always there, of course, but unless you give it the right name the internet has nothing to say either. In short, the stranger stayed a stranger to me for a whole year.
Then one day, out of the blue, I was scrolling through social media when a flower stopped me. Someone had posted a photo with the name of the flower underneath, and it matched the flowers I had seen beside the mahogany tree. That was it: straight to the internet, and the name fitted my plant completely. To be doubly sure, I looked the name up in my most helpful friend, the PDF of the Flora of Dhaka University. Yes, it was there. So this was the stranger’s name. I cannot tell you how happy finding that name made me.
In Bangla I call it modhu lonicera. In English it is the Japanese honeysuckle, and its scientific name is Lonicera japonica. The family is Caprifoliaceae.
What the names say
Let me take the names apart a little. Honeysuckle is a common name given to plants whose flowers hold sweet nectar inside. Around 180 species go by this name, and all of them are placed in the family Caprifoliaceae. Dig into the history a bit and you find that the genus Lonicera was named after the German botanist Adam Lonicer. And since the plant I had found grows in Japan, Japan gives it japonica. Put together, the full name is Lonicera japonica.
Beautiful as the flowers are, in several countries, New Zealand in particular, this plant is known as a weed. It spreads very fast by seed and can easily cover an empty, bare patch of ground in green. The creeper can climb a long way up anything it finds. Given a tree to climb, it can go past 10 metres.
What is inside the plant
Now a little about the wealth inside it. The main components of the essential oil of modhu lonicera are trans-nerolidol, caryophyllene oxide and linalool, along with many others such as eugenol and geraniol. I will only name the compounds whose work is especially noteworthy, since reeling off the rest would just make your head spin for nothing. The ones considered most effective are 3-O-caffeoyl quinic acid, secoxyloganin, luteoloside, 3,5-di-O-caffeoyl quinic acid and 4,5-di-O-caffeoyl quinic acid.
Studies have reported that these compounds act as both antimicrobials and anti-inflammatories. Its antibacterial activity has been reported to be greater than that of good preservatives like potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate, which is why food companies are thinking about using the leaves of modhu lonicera. And why not: the country’s weeds get cleared, and a source of useful compounds comes free and easy.
Whatever else happens, at the end of the day I have found a natural source of sweet nectar. I have also found an alternative to tea. Whenever I feel like it, a flower, or a leaf if there is no flower, will give me the same calm as a cup of tea.
The traditional uses described here are for information only. Consult a doctor before using any plant to treat an illness.
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