Charles Clemon Deam

On this day, in 1951, the botanist Charles Clemon Deam replied to an inquiry about the honeysuckle.

Deam wrote:

"That [plant's] name is to me the same as a red flag to a bull. I cannot tell you in words how I regard this vine.

Your question is does it propagate from seed. I do not believe it does...

I have never heard a good word for it...

All that I can say affirmatively is that it is no good for anything."

In concluding this condemnation of the honeysuckle, he twice suggests that some of the new "insecticides" might kill it.