Honeybind

This magical variety of flowering vine is popular with hummingbirds, which are fast enough to easily escape its attempts to curl around anything that comes near!

## Description

Honeybind is a magical variety of honeysuckle, a climbing vine native to much of the northern hemisphere. It has sweet-scented leaves and flowers, but its berries are somewhat toxic and should be avoided. The nectar from the clustered flowers has a mildly sweet, ethereal flavor, and is very popular with insects and birds. Its flowers are typically white, orange, or yellow, but many other colors exist and have been cultivated by magical gardeners.

### Magical Properties

Magical Honeybind is a slowly mobile plant. It has a tendency to try to **gently ensnare anything** that comes in contact with its vines, as though trying to hug anything it can reach in its eagerness to grow and move towards the best sunlight. **As it is not actually rooted to the ground, it actually moves around on its own, albeit at a snail's pace!**

Fortunately, its grip is very light and easy to break or chew out of, so it is rare to find any creature entangled in it for more than a few moments. Still, some predators like to hide in honeybind to take advantage of a tripped-up rabbit or bird.

While not all potions with these effects may use Honeybind as an ingredient, these are traits commonly ascribed to the magical vine:

* Water element
* Loyalty
* Determination, following your path
* Affection and hugs, happiness
* Nostalgia and comfort
* Wealth and good fortune in all aspects of life
* Protection from evil
* Clinging/uniting/binding/knitting
* Motion and movement
* Healing: anti-inflammatory, coughs, antibacterial, antidote, anti-itch

## Habitat

Temperate, sunny forests and meadows (vine bush), or in the upper canopy of deeper forests where it moves from branch to branch in search of water pooling among the branches. It is an invasive species in many areas, especially in the southern hemisphere.

### How to Collect

Trim off flowering tendrils. The flowers and the vines themselves have different uses.

### How to Prepare

Preparation depends on the intended use, but it is best to use fresh or frozen. The flowers can be dried for some potion uses, however. Sometimes the flowers are crushed and steeped to create a tea or tincture. The nectar can be harvested by removing the flower from the bud.

## Gardening

Honeybind is rather easy to care for: offer **plenty of sunlight upon a trellis** or a comfortable, adequately large fence or shed. It can be watered by misting its lowest stem's trailing roots, which are white in contrast to the green vine and are usually kept tucked up in the shade of its own leaves and vine mass to keep from drying out. **A bird bath or water trough** on its trellis is enough to keep it happily watered, as well.

It needs **regular pruning** to keep it manageable. Care should be taken to keep honeybind from overtaking other bushes or trees, or letting it climb out of reach in a greenhouse, where it might spread and grow to block out all light in the rafters! Some magical gardeners have suggested creating an obstacle course for the vines to climb around to distract them from overtaking other plants, and will treat their honeybind plants like pets.

## Known Uses of Honeybind

* Cleansing Tea
* Glue/Adhesives
* Curse-break elixir
* Binding traps
* Summoning Scrolls
* Shikigami creation
* ...?