Aaron mentioned Lonicera x purpusii. This and one of its parents, L. fragrantissima, are probably in bloom throughout much of North America right now. Nothing beats these for intense, free-on-the-air scent at this time of year. Most people describe the scent as sweet and lemon: it’s amazingly powerful. In the garden of my dreams the bulb garden is surrounded by at tightly clipped hedge of one of these winter honeysuckles. Once you’ve been downwind of a big bush in full bloom, you’ll be searching for a place in your garden to squeeze it in. The big gaunt shrub is about as homely as they come; but the scent is glorious beyond easy description. The weed police must be anosmic. If we were really serious about eliminating all alien plants from North America, we should start with the non-native agricultural crops such as corn, wheat, soy beans and rice. The cultivation of this one category of plants has displaced or outright destroyed more native plants than any other cause. Since not one major agricultural crop is native to North America, we would all soon commence to starve. And then we might realize that, since no humans are native to the Americas, it’s time to move back to wherever we came from and return to the early practice of eating only local, wild food: entomophagy anyone? The presently burgeoning human population would soon be hugely reduced due to malnutrition and downright starvation. This would avert the nightmare scenario of the predicted nine billion population level predicted by some for the near future. Are alien plants “invading” the countryside really the problem? Aren’t they really just another symptom of other, deeply entrenched problems? I would say that cleansing the countryside will only result in the removing or obscuring of some of the evidence for those other problems. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/