• Forsythia: common and genus name of flowering shrubs in the olive family (Oleaceae). Ten or more species, but authorities differ on the precise number. Most originally from eastern Asia, but one species is native to southeastern Europe. Typically 3-10 feet tall. Opposite leaves (usually simple); margins can be serrated or smooth. Bright yellow, four-lobed flowers appear in early spring (March in Iowa) before the leaves emerge.
• My first forsythia. Living in the south Kensington area of London in the spring of 1993. While crossing through nearby Hyde Park one chilly February morning, I came across several bushes covered with bright yellow blossoms. The following months were full of wonderful days visiting gardens throughout England and Wales, but no flowers that spring ever surpassed the pleasure provided by those brave forsythia.
• Forsythia is named in honor of Scottish botanist William Forsyth (1737-1804), the royal head gardener, a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society, and the person some credit with building the first English rock garden. The shrub was brought to Great Britain by Robert Fortune (1812-1880), a fellow Scot and an infamous plant hunter.
• The great English gardener Christopher Lloyd’s reflections on forsythia in The Well-Tempered Garden (pages 352-3).
“We have had a bellyful of this shrub by mid-April and it is a relief when its leaves at last expand and begin to subdue yet another epidemic of the yellow peril. If we only had a preponderance of whitewashed buildings in this country, forsythias would be ten times improved. But the shrub has intrinsic faults quite apart from its setting.
“There is no elegance or character of any sort in its structure. Its crude exposé of colour is undiluted by foliage. And in its most popular cultivars the flowers are packed into such congested lumps that it is like being asked to swallow a helping of cornflour pudding. Of course there are forsythias and forsythias. The primrose yellow, early flowering Forsythia ovata is sweet, and I like the slender wands of F. suspensa. And any forsythia in a good setting can be strikingly handsome, but one has to be careful. For instance, you often see an excruciating combination of forsythia and the deep pink flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum.” Rest assure, no such combination would ever be allowed in the Alumni House Garden.
• Forsythias are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Brown-tail and The Gothic.
• Excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on forsythia:
“Two species of forsythia are at the heart of the selected forms, for both species are variable, and garden hybrids: Forsythia suspensa and F. viridissima. ‘These two species are, as it were, the founder-members of the forsythia family’ writes Alice Coats; they were the earliest species brought into Western gardens from the Far East and they have each played a role in the modern garden shrubs.
“Forsythia suspensa, the first to be noticed by a Westerner, was seen in a Japanese garden by the botanist-surgeon Carl Peter Thunberg, who included it (as a lilac) in his Flora Japonica 1784. Thunberg's professional connections lay with the Dutch East India Company, and F. suspensa reached Holland first, by 1833. In England, when it was being offered by Veitch Nurseries in Exeter at mid-century, it was still considered a rarity. Not all the varieties of suspensa are splaying and drooping, best seen hanging over a retaining wall; an erect form found by Fortune near Peking in 1861 was for a time classed as a species— F. fortunei.
“Forsythia viridissma, meanwhile, had overtaken it in European gardens. The Scottish plant-hunter Robert Fortune "discovered" it— in a mandarin's garden of the coastal city of Chusan (Zhoushan)— before he ever saw it growing wild in the mountains in Chusan's province, Zhejiang.”
• Propagation. Most forsythia sold in nurseries will have been propagated by cuttings taken from green wood. Cut a 3-6" long branch and place the end into moist soil. Rooting should take a few weeks. Transplant rooted cuttings anytime. New forsythia can also be started by layering, placing a weight on a branch so it remains in contact with the soil. After the branch has generated new roots, pull up the new forsythia, cut the rooted part from the mother branch, and replant separately.
• Wood from the forsythia is used for the bow of the ajaeng, a Korean string instrument.
• According to a BBC guide on perennial flowers and shrubs, the Forsythia x intermedia cultivar ‘Spectabilis’ is a vigorous cultivar, covered with deep yellow blooms in early to mid-spring. It is a hardy cultivar that does well in full sun or partial shade and in a wide variety of soils (heavy or light, acidic or alkaline). making it a good candidate for beginning gardeners. Trimming should occur in the spring after the forsythia has finished blooming. [Note: there is no forsythia in the Almni Garden’s original plant list, but it’s likely Coe’s forsythia are members of the ‘Spectabilis’ group.]
• According to the eattheweeds website, forsythia blossoms and leaves are potentially eatable: “. . . the blossoms are edible raw, though they can be slightly bitter. They add color to salads and are a cheery garnish. The very young leaves are also edible raw but that’s iffy as they contain some of the glycoside Phillyrin, and it’s debatable just how nasty that is. Very young leaves have also been added to soups. As you can see the key is ‘very young leaves.’ I suspect we know these things because some folks were very hungry for anything green in the spring after long winters.”
• An internet search turned up the following comments on forsythia as a medical herb:
“F. suspensa, the weeping Forsythia, is an important herb in Chinese medicine and has been used for at least three thousand years, perhaps four. Called lian qiao it’s unripe yellow fruit and seeds ground together. Lian qiao is used internally for chills, fevers, headaches and externally for burns, infections, rashes and the like. Lab tests show the seed to be anti-inflammatory and an anti-oxidant. . . . But a 1991 study of 102 raw pharmaceuticals used in traditional Chinese medicine suggested lian qiao might be potentially cancer causing, perhaps [a] glycoside issue. In 2009 [Wang F.N., et al.] found three new glycosides in the F. suspensa bringing the total to nine. Forsythia extracts are used in commercial products treating dandruff, acne, and athlete’s foot.”
• Green Deane’s Plant Profile
“Forsythias have narrow, dark green leaves with a lighter underside, in opposite pairs, the margin is serrated. There are also a large number of variegated and golden leaved varieties. Yellow flowers, four narrow petals at right angles form a short tube. One to three flowers per node. They prefer sun, well-drained soil; may need watering in dry spells. Blossoms and very young, small leaves can be eaten raw or cooked.”
• Another name for forsythia is “Golden-Bell.”
• A description of forsythia by the American botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey in his The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1935).
“Deciduous: lvs. opposite, petioled, serrate or entire, simply or partly 3-parted to 3-folioate: fls. 1-6, axillary, pedicelled, heterostylous; calyx and corolla deeply 4-lobed, lobes of the corolla oblong, longer than the campanulate tube; stamens 2, included, inserted at the base of the corolla; ovary superior; style slender with 2-lobed stigma: f. a 2-celled, dehiscent caps. with many winged seeds.
“The golden-bells are highly ornamental, free-flowering shrubs, with simple or ternate leaves and showy yellow flowers, borne in great profusion along the slender branches in early spring before the leaves. They belong to the showiest early-flowering shrubs, and have handsome, clean foliage, remarkably free from insects or fungi, remaining unchanged until later in fall. The upright forms are well adapted for the borders of shrubberies and the pendulous form for covering walls, fences, arbors or porches. They grow in almost any kind of garden soil, and are hardy North except F. viridissima, which is somewhat tender. Propagation is readily by greenwood and hardwood cuttings; also by seeds. The branches of the pendulous form often take root at the tips when touching the ground, and send forth vigorous shoots, like some brambles or the walking-fern.”
• Pruning. Since flowers form on the previous year’s growth, pruning should occur in spring after the flowers have bloomed. It’s okay to prune substantial portions of the shrub because in most instances forsythia will grow back quite rapidly, up to two feet in one year.
• Directions for forcing forsythia to bloom indoors in the winter.
(1) Cut off one or more branches.
(2) Bring branches indoors and place in vase of water.
(3) Two-three weeks later, yellow blooms should emerge.
(4) Repeat process for cheerful forsythia blooms all winter.
• Care of Forsythia:
(1) According to the gardening authorities, forsythia should receive full sun, preferably six or more hours per day. Fewer hours of sun result in fewer blooms. Both of the forsythia in the Alum Garden are planted under flowering crab and receive minimal direct sun light once the apple trees leaf out; however, these trees lose many of their leaves during the late spring and summer–due to the scab–providing the forsythia with a friendly, filtered sunlight in the summer.
(2) Forsythia do best in organic rich, well-draining soil. They also prefer to have a regular supply of moisture (up to 2" per week during the summer), and appreciate mulching to help retain soil moisture.
(3) Fertilizing is probably not necessary, but any fertilizing should be done once a year in early spring, using a high phosphorous fertilizer. Forsythia are rarely bothered by insects or diseases and seldom need insecticides or fungicides.
• Information on Forsythia from a Clemson University website:
“The early spring flower is the most appealing feature of this plant. Flowers are usually profuse, and open before the leaves emerge on the plant. With an unusually mild winter, bloom may occur as early as late January, but usually occurs in March.
“Flowers will last for two or three weeks unless killed by cold. The yellow flower color varies with varieties, ranging from pale to deep yellow. The flowers are 1¼ to 1½ inches long and wide, bell-like and produced in clusters. They bloom on last year's wood. Dark green leaves emerge shortly after bloom. In the fall they may turn slightly yellow, maroon or purple, depending upon the cultivar and the amount of sunlight received.
“Forsythias do not belong in areas where they must be kept in bounds, such as in foundation plantings, unless compact cultivars are chosen. They are best used as a specimen or in shrub borders and groupings. Forsythia may also be used to create a hedge and may be planted with a 3- or 4-foot spacing between plants.
“Larger cultivars can become unruly and require some maintenance wherever they are grown.
“The ideal soil is fertile, loose and well-drained, although it will tolerate almost any soil condition. Forsythia should be planted in full sun for maximum flowering. The forsythia hybrids compete successfully with the demanding roots of other shrubs and trees and transplant easily.
“Prune in spring after flowering so that buds for the next year can develop in the fall. Potential flowers for the next year will be cut off if the plant is pruned after the buds develop. Pruning should not be a shearing process, but a thinning out of the older branches at the base of the plant, allowing the more vigorous branches to take over. They are often sheared to make a formal hedge or to reduce the size of the plant, but this detracts from the graceful habit of growth. They can be cut back to the ground and allowed to produce all new growth.”
• From the Missouri Botanical Garden website:
Common Name: weeping forsythia
Type: Deciduous shrub
Family: Oleaceae
Native Range: China
Zone: 5 to 8
Height: 6.00 to 10.00 feet
Spread: 6.00 to 10.00 feet
Bloom Time: March to April
Bloom Description: Yellow
Sun: Full sun to part shade
Water: Medium
Maintenance: Low
Suggested Use: Hedge
Flower: Showy
Tolerate: Deer, Clay Soil, Black Walnut
• The annual Forsythia Festival’s Miss Forsythia pageant occurs the second week of March in Forsyth, Georgia.
• My first forsythia. Living in the south Kensington area of London in the spring of 1993. While crossing through nearby Hyde Park one chilly February morning, I came across several bushes covered with bright yellow blossoms. The following months were full of wonderful days visiting gardens throughout England and Wales, but no flowers that spring ever surpassed the pleasure provided by those brave forsythia.
• Forsythia is named in honor of Scottish botanist William Forsyth (1737-1804), the royal head gardener, a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society, and the person some credit with building the first English rock garden. The shrub was brought to Great Britain by Robert Fortune (1812-1880), a fellow Scot and an infamous plant hunter.
• The great English gardener Christopher Lloyd’s reflections on forsythia in The Well-Tempered Garden (pages 352-3).
“We have had a bellyful of this shrub by mid-April and it is a relief when its leaves at last expand and begin to subdue yet another epidemic of the yellow peril. If we only had a preponderance of whitewashed buildings in this country, forsythias would be ten times improved. But the shrub has intrinsic faults quite apart from its setting.
“There is no elegance or character of any sort in its structure. Its crude exposé of colour is undiluted by foliage. And in its most popular cultivars the flowers are packed into such congested lumps that it is like being asked to swallow a helping of cornflour pudding. Of course there are forsythias and forsythias. The primrose yellow, early flowering Forsythia ovata is sweet, and I like the slender wands of F. suspensa. And any forsythia in a good setting can be strikingly handsome, but one has to be careful. For instance, you often see an excruciating combination of forsythia and the deep pink flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum.” Rest assure, no such combination would ever be allowed in the Alumni House Garden.
• Forsythias are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Brown-tail and The Gothic.
• Excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on forsythia:
“Two species of forsythia are at the heart of the selected forms, for both species are variable, and garden hybrids: Forsythia suspensa and F. viridissima. ‘These two species are, as it were, the founder-members of the forsythia family’ writes Alice Coats; they were the earliest species brought into Western gardens from the Far East and they have each played a role in the modern garden shrubs.
“Forsythia suspensa, the first to be noticed by a Westerner, was seen in a Japanese garden by the botanist-surgeon Carl Peter Thunberg, who included it (as a lilac) in his Flora Japonica 1784. Thunberg's professional connections lay with the Dutch East India Company, and F. suspensa reached Holland first, by 1833. In England, when it was being offered by Veitch Nurseries in Exeter at mid-century, it was still considered a rarity. Not all the varieties of suspensa are splaying and drooping, best seen hanging over a retaining wall; an erect form found by Fortune near Peking in 1861 was for a time classed as a species— F. fortunei.
“Forsythia viridissma, meanwhile, had overtaken it in European gardens. The Scottish plant-hunter Robert Fortune "discovered" it— in a mandarin's garden of the coastal city of Chusan (Zhoushan)— before he ever saw it growing wild in the mountains in Chusan's province, Zhejiang.”
• Propagation. Most forsythia sold in nurseries will have been propagated by cuttings taken from green wood. Cut a 3-6" long branch and place the end into moist soil. Rooting should take a few weeks. Transplant rooted cuttings anytime. New forsythia can also be started by layering, placing a weight on a branch so it remains in contact with the soil. After the branch has generated new roots, pull up the new forsythia, cut the rooted part from the mother branch, and replant separately.
• Wood from the forsythia is used for the bow of the ajaeng, a Korean string instrument.
• According to a BBC guide on perennial flowers and shrubs, the Forsythia x intermedia cultivar ‘Spectabilis’ is a vigorous cultivar, covered with deep yellow blooms in early to mid-spring. It is a hardy cultivar that does well in full sun or partial shade and in a wide variety of soils (heavy or light, acidic or alkaline). making it a good candidate for beginning gardeners. Trimming should occur in the spring after the forsythia has finished blooming. [Note: there is no forsythia in the Almni Garden’s original plant list, but it’s likely Coe’s forsythia are members of the ‘Spectabilis’ group.]
• According to the eattheweeds website, forsythia blossoms and leaves are potentially eatable: “. . . the blossoms are edible raw, though they can be slightly bitter. They add color to salads and are a cheery garnish. The very young leaves are also edible raw but that’s iffy as they contain some of the glycoside Phillyrin, and it’s debatable just how nasty that is. Very young leaves have also been added to soups. As you can see the key is ‘very young leaves.’ I suspect we know these things because some folks were very hungry for anything green in the spring after long winters.”
• An internet search turned up the following comments on forsythia as a medical herb:
“F. suspensa, the weeping Forsythia, is an important herb in Chinese medicine and has been used for at least three thousand years, perhaps four. Called lian qiao it’s unripe yellow fruit and seeds ground together. Lian qiao is used internally for chills, fevers, headaches and externally for burns, infections, rashes and the like. Lab tests show the seed to be anti-inflammatory and an anti-oxidant. . . . But a 1991 study of 102 raw pharmaceuticals used in traditional Chinese medicine suggested lian qiao might be potentially cancer causing, perhaps [a] glycoside issue. In 2009 [Wang F.N., et al.] found three new glycosides in the F. suspensa bringing the total to nine. Forsythia extracts are used in commercial products treating dandruff, acne, and athlete’s foot.”
• Green Deane’s Plant Profile
“Forsythias have narrow, dark green leaves with a lighter underside, in opposite pairs, the margin is serrated. There are also a large number of variegated and golden leaved varieties. Yellow flowers, four narrow petals at right angles form a short tube. One to three flowers per node. They prefer sun, well-drained soil; may need watering in dry spells. Blossoms and very young, small leaves can be eaten raw or cooked.”
• Another name for forsythia is “Golden-Bell.”
• A description of forsythia by the American botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey in his The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1935).
“Deciduous: lvs. opposite, petioled, serrate or entire, simply or partly 3-parted to 3-folioate: fls. 1-6, axillary, pedicelled, heterostylous; calyx and corolla deeply 4-lobed, lobes of the corolla oblong, longer than the campanulate tube; stamens 2, included, inserted at the base of the corolla; ovary superior; style slender with 2-lobed stigma: f. a 2-celled, dehiscent caps. with many winged seeds.
“The golden-bells are highly ornamental, free-flowering shrubs, with simple or ternate leaves and showy yellow flowers, borne in great profusion along the slender branches in early spring before the leaves. They belong to the showiest early-flowering shrubs, and have handsome, clean foliage, remarkably free from insects or fungi, remaining unchanged until later in fall. The upright forms are well adapted for the borders of shrubberies and the pendulous form for covering walls, fences, arbors or porches. They grow in almost any kind of garden soil, and are hardy North except F. viridissima, which is somewhat tender. Propagation is readily by greenwood and hardwood cuttings; also by seeds. The branches of the pendulous form often take root at the tips when touching the ground, and send forth vigorous shoots, like some brambles or the walking-fern.”
• Pruning. Since flowers form on the previous year’s growth, pruning should occur in spring after the flowers have bloomed. It’s okay to prune substantial portions of the shrub because in most instances forsythia will grow back quite rapidly, up to two feet in one year.
• Directions for forcing forsythia to bloom indoors in the winter.
(1) Cut off one or more branches.
(2) Bring branches indoors and place in vase of water.
(3) Two-three weeks later, yellow blooms should emerge.
(4) Repeat process for cheerful forsythia blooms all winter.
• Care of Forsythia:
(1) According to the gardening authorities, forsythia should receive full sun, preferably six or more hours per day. Fewer hours of sun result in fewer blooms. Both of the forsythia in the Alum Garden are planted under flowering crab and receive minimal direct sun light once the apple trees leaf out; however, these trees lose many of their leaves during the late spring and summer–due to the scab–providing the forsythia with a friendly, filtered sunlight in the summer.
(2) Forsythia do best in organic rich, well-draining soil. They also prefer to have a regular supply of moisture (up to 2" per week during the summer), and appreciate mulching to help retain soil moisture.
(3) Fertilizing is probably not necessary, but any fertilizing should be done once a year in early spring, using a high phosphorous fertilizer. Forsythia are rarely bothered by insects or diseases and seldom need insecticides or fungicides.
• Information on Forsythia from a Clemson University website:
“The early spring flower is the most appealing feature of this plant. Flowers are usually profuse, and open before the leaves emerge on the plant. With an unusually mild winter, bloom may occur as early as late January, but usually occurs in March.
“Flowers will last for two or three weeks unless killed by cold. The yellow flower color varies with varieties, ranging from pale to deep yellow. The flowers are 1¼ to 1½ inches long and wide, bell-like and produced in clusters. They bloom on last year's wood. Dark green leaves emerge shortly after bloom. In the fall they may turn slightly yellow, maroon or purple, depending upon the cultivar and the amount of sunlight received.
“Forsythias do not belong in areas where they must be kept in bounds, such as in foundation plantings, unless compact cultivars are chosen. They are best used as a specimen or in shrub borders and groupings. Forsythia may also be used to create a hedge and may be planted with a 3- or 4-foot spacing between plants.
“Larger cultivars can become unruly and require some maintenance wherever they are grown.
“The ideal soil is fertile, loose and well-drained, although it will tolerate almost any soil condition. Forsythia should be planted in full sun for maximum flowering. The forsythia hybrids compete successfully with the demanding roots of other shrubs and trees and transplant easily.
“Prune in spring after flowering so that buds for the next year can develop in the fall. Potential flowers for the next year will be cut off if the plant is pruned after the buds develop. Pruning should not be a shearing process, but a thinning out of the older branches at the base of the plant, allowing the more vigorous branches to take over. They are often sheared to make a formal hedge or to reduce the size of the plant, but this detracts from the graceful habit of growth. They can be cut back to the ground and allowed to produce all new growth.”
• From the Missouri Botanical Garden website:
Common Name: weeping forsythia
Type: Deciduous shrub
Family: Oleaceae
Native Range: China
Zone: 5 to 8
Height: 6.00 to 10.00 feet
Spread: 6.00 to 10.00 feet
Bloom Time: March to April
Bloom Description: Yellow
Sun: Full sun to part shade
Water: Medium
Maintenance: Low
Suggested Use: Hedge
Flower: Showy
Tolerate: Deer, Clay Soil, Black Walnut
• The annual Forsythia Festival’s Miss Forsythia pageant occurs the second week of March in Forsyth, Georgia.