oh great. it does bear a striking resemblance to amur honeysuckle. I bet the birds gave me a complimentary trial offer....
Can anyone think of any natives that look a bit like amur honeysuckle so I can do some closer comparisons?
I guess I can always take a spring to the University of Illinois field office for ID...

Are the leaves arranged opposite one another or alternately? That is always a good way to start when id'ing woody plants. Honeysuckles have opposite leaves.

opposite leaves, tapering to a sharp point, stems tending to have a redish tint to them. Larger bushes have a weeping habit, and old growth is very woody, rough bark.
The ones just now growing here haven't had flowers yet, but the ones they so closely resemble have bright red berries and whitish to pinkish flowers
I have spent so many years jerking and burning vine honeysuckle that I totally overlooked the bush varieties.
And we also have a low scrubby bush that I have always heard called 'buckbrush' and never really wondered about its real name. It's barely knee-high and has tiny ovate leaves, red berries in the fall. But I think it's something else but stll can't find a match in my books. Funny how when you are surrounded by the same plants all your life you never stop to think about where they came from or if they are harming the natives. I never knew anything about japanese honeysuckle until about 15 years ago. Til then it was something I was pleased to see since it smelled so nice in the summer. After I began trying to thin it out of our woods here, I even had people stop and ask why I was doing that, since it was so good for rabbits and deer and was such a lovely vine. SOmetimes I wish I did not know the difference, because I am now aware that there's no way I will ever win this battle, not even on 5 acres.

I googled it in images.

Here is a link that might be useful: ???

Sounds like shrub honeysuckle.

Perhaps the other bush you are thinking of is Glossy Buckthorn.

Here is a link that might be useful: Glossy buckthorn

See this link to buckbrush. The nursery variety is called Beauty Berry.

I find it quite amusing that you pick up one book on natives and are told all vining honeysuckles are non-native and then the next book states all bush honeysuckles are non-native. I have given up on deciding which is correct.

Here is a link that might be useful: buckbrush

If the linked plant in the above post is what you have (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus), it is noted on the USDA Plants database as a native.

Is there a book that says all vining honeysuckles are non-native? That would be an ignorant author then not to know about Lonicera sempervirens. I have been pulling japanese honeysuckle for years on my property and recently found a patch of L. sempervirens mixed in (the leaves are different once you look at them).

There is a "bush honeysuckle" that is native, but it is in the Diervilla genus, not Lonicera (although to be confusing, one species is Diervilla lonicera).

elly...I linked to those same images right after my last post. It's no longer a question, especailly now that I drove over to have a closer look at the larger bushes a few miles from here. They are now flowering and this removes all doubt. I do wonder what events took place to give me so many sprouts all of a sudden. The flocks of roving robins come to mind but I will never know for certain.

As for the link to buckbrush...esh, it's ok --I did some more reading over the last day or so and found out more about the buckbrush. I figured all along that it was a native, but it bothered me that I had all these colonies of plants in my woods and I'd never been sure of their proper name. At first, when I linked to 'buckbrush', I only got a few hits on the California/western plant. And I know that the Virginia site listing it as a weed isn't taking into account native/non-native, just weed tendencies. If you theoretically had ginseng popping up in your rose garden, you'd consider the ginseng a weed (simply something growing in an undesired place) and pull it.
(That was a crazy example!)
I notice that mixed in with the japonica is a honeysuckle with deeply serrated leaves...is that sempervirens?

Gosh, what was I thinking. I have seen sempervirens before...I need a taxonomy course!
I really have a hard time putting names with faces sometimes.

I DO have occasional honeysuckle with deeply serrated leaves...

The japanese honeysuckle does get lobed (or serrated as you say) leaves, that is one feature that makes it noticeable - see the last picture on the page in the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lonicera japonica

esh you are indeed correct. I am ashamed to say that I never noticed this, and that after years of jerking the stuff up I never bothered to really pay attention to the lobed leaves and follow them back to the ground. I just had a mat of vines and pulled it all up where they met in the ground and gave a heave.