All For Gardening
Blueberry imposter? 🧐
In What's this plant

Blueberry imposter? 🧐


My blueberry bush got HUGE suddenly and I'm suspecting an imposter is growing in its space.

Blooms look kind of like honeysuckle. No fragrance. My blueberry bush is somewhat new and I've never seen the blooms to compare.

Very similar leaves but less pointed than the blueberry bush.

Pennsylvania, zone 7.

Post : thanks everyone who replied to my seemingly dumb ass! I have a mystery on my hands (well in my garden)! My in-laws had three high bush blueberry bushes (that they harvested from) in containers. They gave them to us and we planted them in a berry patch – and now they're rand-os. Some Scooby doo type sht.

by FernBabyFern731

12 Comments

  1. Realistic-Reception5

    None of those are blueberry, the first imposter is invasive honeysuckle of some sort, and the second blueberry bush is invasive winged euonymus. The third isn’t blueberry either. Blueberry leaves are alternate, not opposite.

  2. jwhisen

    Yes, that’s a honeysuckle. The part you have circled and labeled as blueberry also appears to be a *Euonymus*, not blueberry.

  3. Rhodomazer

    Hate to break it to you but none of those are blueberry. For the easy tell, blueberry has alternate leaves and everything in your pictures has opposite. The ones you label as imposter are bush honeysuckle. Your “second blueberry bush” is a species of euonymus – possibly burning bush / Euonymus alatus. And I’m pretty sure your final “blueberry” is the same. Clipped pic of blueberry blooming branch – the leaf attachments are a bit tricky to make out but you can at least see the alternate branching which follows the same pattern as leaves.

    https://preview.redd.it/gcu06kjg7zxg1.png?width=886&format=png&auto=webp&s=71cf4946ebe363ddcd8f9867172d977266223a8e

  4. Mountain_School_6391

    TBH, neither one of those things looks like a blueberry. The blooming one on the right is an invasive shrub honeysuckle, *Lonicera maackii.* Originally from Asia, it’s become a huge problem in the Midwest and the South, maybe even further afield than that. Rip it out. Can’t make out the item you have IDed as a blueberry, but it looks a lot more like a burning bush (*Euonymus alatus*, also invasive altho not as badly as that honeysuckle).

  6. Pibbsyreads

    Honeysuckle! Kill, kill, kill, ha, ha,ha

  9. Ainulindalei

    The Lonicera is *probably* xylosteum (fluffy leaves).
    it certainly is not L. caerulea “sibirica”, which is sometimes called Siberian blueberry, and with wich L. xylosteum can be confused if not in flower/fruit (both have sort of oval fluffy leaves, but caerulea has yellow, more tube shaped flowers that have comletely fused ovaries, producing longish blueberry-like fruit, in appearrance and taste, xylosteum wine red twin round berries, that do not taste good and might gve you indigestion); it also is not L. maacki (the very invasive one), which does not have fluffy leaves of such shape, but glabrous or with shorter, sandpapery pubescence, and more pointy leaves. It is also not L. periclymenum, which is a vine with much bigger flowers.
    You should still take it out, L. xylosteum is native where I live (and a useful source of food for birds), but it is not particularly choosy about where it wants to grow, and is a common woodland plant, and might become invasive. I am also not 100% percent sure it is that species, I am not too sure now if the leaves are fluffy or not. It is 100% not maackii though.

    The Eunymus is an Euonymus, but beyond that I would not comment.

    third plant is a Forsythia.

  10. Deadlydiamond98

    None of them are blueberries, not even if you’re in SE england /j.

    Though I’m not sure what the one you labled blueverries actually is, the one you labled as an imposter is honey suckle. It gets the name honey suckle due to the fact that you can suck on the ends of flowers for a small amount of nectar. Honey suckle is invasive though, and no other parts of the plant can be eaten to my knowledge

Pin