Arnold Zwicky's Blog

People back East are enjoying one of the exhuberant signs of spring: bright yellow blooming forsythias. Two photos: as a whole shrub and in close-up:

(#1)

(#2)

From Wikipedia:

Forsythia … is a genus of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae (olive family). There are about 11 species, mostly native to eastern Asia, but one native to southeastern Europe. The common name is also forsythia; the genus is named after William Forsyth.

… 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.

… Forsythia × intermedia, as its name suggests, is a hybrid of F. suspensa and F. viridissima

As for Forsyth:

William Forsyth (1737–1804) was a Scottish botanist. He was a royal head gardener and a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society. (link)

We don’t see much forsythia in these parts, because they require a winter freeze to flourish. They do grow in California and elsewhere in the West, but only in areas with cold winters; the Sunset New Western Garden Book enumerates these.

This entry was posted on April 24, 2014 at 8:28 am and is filed under Language and plants, Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.