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Forsythia , Sunset Western Garden Book, 1995:606–607 is a genus of in the olive family Oleaceae. There are about 11 species, mostly native plant to Eastern Asia, but one native to Southeastern Europe. Forsythia – also one of the plant's common names – is named after the botanist William Forsyth.
The flowers are produced in the early spring before the leaves, bright yellow with a deeply four-lobed corolla, the petals joined only at the base. These become pendent in rainy weather thus shielding the reproductive parts.
The fruit is a dry capsule, containing several winged seeds. (1992). 9780333474945, Macmillan. ISBN 9780333474945
There is a long-standing belief that forsythia flowers produce lactose, but lactose occurs only very rarely in natural sources other than milk, and attempts to find lactose in forsythia have been unsuccessful.
The genus is named after William Forsyth (1737–1804), a Scottish botanist who was a royal head gardener and a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society.
A genetic study does not fully match the traditionally accepted species listed above, and groups the species in four : (1) F. suspensa; (2) F. europaea—F. giraldiana; (3) F. ovata—F. japonica—F. viridissima; and (4) F. koreana—F. mandschurica—F. saxatilis. Of the additional species, F. koreana is usually cited as a variety of F. viridissima, and F. saxatilis as a variety of F. japonica; the genetic evidence suggests they may be better treated as distinct species.
Forsythias are used as food plants by the of some Lepidoptera species including the brown-tail and Gothic moth.
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 viridissima, meanwhile, had overtaken it in European gardens. The Scottish plant-hunter Robert Fortune "discovered" it—in a mandarin garden of the coastal city of Zhoushan (Zhoushan)—before he ever saw it growing wild in the mountains in Zhejiang province. Forsythia × intermedia, as its name suggests, is a hybrid of F. suspensa and F. viridissima, introduced in continental Europe about 1880. Repeated crosses of the same two parents have made reiterations of F. × intermedia quite variable. A bud sport of a particularly showy ( spectabilis) form is widely marketed as F. × intermedia 'Lynwood Variety'. This cultivar has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit, as have F. × intermedia Week End 'Courtalyn' and F. Marée d'Or 'Courtasol'.
About the time of the First World War further species were discovered by plant hunters in China: F. giraldian (found in Gansu, 1910) and F. ovata (collected from seed in Korea by E.H. Wilson) have been particularly useful as seed parents in 20th-century American crosses.
Vegetative propagation is usually achieved via cuttings, taken from green wood after flowering in late spring to early summer. Alternatively, cuttings may be taken between November and February, though this may reduce the flowering spectacle of the following spring. Low-hanging boughs that touch the ground will often take root, adding to the total mass of the plant, but can be removed for transplanting. A common practice (known as layering) is to place a weight over a branch to keep it on the ground and, after it has rooted, to dig up the roots and cut the rooted part from the main branch; this can then be planted.
Retrieved at 11.51 on Friday 2025-3-14.
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