A member of the Dutch Embassy visited Japan circa 1775 and collected approximately 1,000 species of japonica. His interest was in a deciduous shrub with slender weeping branches covered completely with yellow flowers. The shrub was abloom before the leaves appeared. Mr. Thunberg called the shrub syringa suspensa.
In 1804, a professor of Botany at Copenhagen recognized that the plant was not a lilac and created the genus Forsythia. The genus commemorated William Forsyth (1737-1804), Scottish botanist who co-founded the Royal Horticultural Society in London and served as the director of the Royal Garden at Kensington at that time. By the late 1850s, Forsythia suspensa had been cultivated in England at the Veitch Nurseries.
Circa 1844, Robert Fortune made a trip to China sponsored by the Horticultural Society of London. There he found a cultivated Forsythia in a Chinese garden. Fortune referred to the plant as Forsythia viridissima. This genus was described as a deciduous shrub growing eight to ten feet tall. The leaves where shed in autumn and buds formed to unfurl yellow flowers the next spring. For about 20 years, Forsythia viridissmia was the only Forsythia cultivated in Britain and the United States.
A cross between Forsythia viridissima and F. suspensa yielded a plant named F. x intermedia. This hybrid was hardier than either parent plant. The F. x intermedia has yielded contemporary Forsythia. F. japonica came from Seoul, Korea in 1919. It was described as a small three-foot shrub with many yellow flowers, according to Arnoldia Arboretum, Harvard Education: The Story of Forsythia.
This original oriental shrub is a member of the olive (Oleaceae) family. The leaves are ovate, growing in pairs on opposite sides of the stem. The flowers are four-lobed petals joined at the base. The flowers produce lactose, which rarely forms in natural sources except for milk. The foliage turns yellow-green in autumn with a tinge of purple around the edges. The stems have lenticels or openings to exchange gas between the atmosphere and the plant’s internal tissues.
The seeds of the Forsythia are contained inside the fruit, which is brown when dried. The winged fruit is used in Chinese medicine to treat fever, headache and viral infections. It is often combined with honeysuckle for a more potent anti-viral effect.
Eleven species of Forsythia can be found in 15 of the United States, according to one source. Another source adds the state of Georgia to the following states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee and Alabama.
A drive through North Georgia in early spring will find rows and rows of solid yellow shrubs or bushes on nearly every lawn. Besides the yellow Forsythia, there are now pink and white varieties.
