The non-native plant that’s part of Connecticut’s landscape
Forsythia hedges — those shaggy yellow mounds, those saffron wooly mammoths — are about to have their day in the sun.
For eyes sick of all this winter stuff, it's heartening — lots of
forsythia. When you see it in bloom, you can relax, it's really spring.
Forsythia is non-native and noninvasive, with a mixed-up lineage. It's a Chinese shrub named after a Scotsman.
By now, it's so much a part of Connecticut's landscape — the place we live, and the place we picture in our minds — that it's hard to imagine an April without it.
It's also, for all its unruly ways, a domestic plant. It doesn't wander.
“The only time you see it in the woods is when it's near some old home,” said Jeff Ward, a forester with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven.
Not everyone loves it. Sean McNamara, owner of the Redding Nursery said he's never sold a lot of it.
This has to do with timing. His nursery doesn't really open until mid-May — Mother's Day, McNamara said. By then, the bloom is off the forsythia and people are thinking about other plants.
There may be some family history involved as well.
“My dad hated it,” McNamara said. “He thought it grows like a weed.”
On the other hand, the Kent Greenhouse and Gardens sold 200 forsythia pots to one customer last year, said Melanie Fortsman, a gardening specialist there.
“They're as hardy as heck, and they're reliable when it comes to blossoming,” she said.
Darryl Newman, owner of Planter's Choice, a plant wholesaler in Newtown said he sells a decent amount of forsythia each spring. He admits it makes a nice hedge in its glory days. But being so ubiquitous, it can seem a little unoriginal. And once it finishes blossoming, it's just shaggy and green.
“I wouldn't put it on my list of ten top plants,” Newman said.
Forsythia is grouped in the Oleaceae family — the olives.
It is named in honor of William Forsyth, who was born in the town of Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1737 and who eventually became chief superintendent of the Royal Gardens at Kensington and St. James Place under King George III. He was also one of the founders of the Royal Horticultural Society.
But it's neither a Scottish nor English plant.
It's been cultivated in China for centuries. Of the 11 known species, 10 come from China, the other from the Balkans.
Western eyes eventually caught sight of it, Carl Peter Thurnberg, a pioneering Swedish botanist described it in 1784 in his book “Flora Japonica.” In 1833, Dutch botanists began cultivating and planting it in the Netherlands. The English did the same by the mid-1800s, Americans by the early 1900s.
As anyone who has forsythia knows, it thrives in sunny spots. Prune it and it grows back as soon as you turn your back on it. Keeping it well-shaped is a threeseason-long job.
It's easier to just whack at it once it's past flowering and let it bramble on for the rest of the year. (I take a chainsaw to my forsythia every few years and cut it down to size. Within a few days, it's sprouting anew.)
Because it blooms thick and early, bees and other pollinators hurry to it. I have found catbird nests in its thickets. It grows so abundantly browsing deer can't keep up with it.
But it is not a native plant. Butterflies and moths don't feed on its leaves. It does not foster insect life. If you're being a stickler, it does not belong here.
But it is not invasive. Rose Hiskes, a plant diagnostician and horticulturist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, is co-chairman of the state Invasive Plant Working Group.
She said the state has set nine criteria for a species to be considered invasive
Forsythia fits the first of the nine — it is nonindigenous. Gardeners, plant sellers, brought it here.
It is widely dispersed throughout the state — and there is a lot of it.
But here is its saving grace. It does not spread into other open areas. It does not disperse and out-compete other native plants. It does not produce seeds that birds feed on, then poop out, spreading the seeds across the countryside.
It is like another beloved springtime import from China
“Lilacs are non-native,” said Forstman of the Kent Greenhouse. “And they don't spread.”