Forsythia flowers, sign of spring

Forsythia flowers in miniature hand-painted Chinese vase Qianlong style.

For most people, seeing the golden-blossoms of Forsythia flowers is one of the first signs of spring arrival.

Forsythia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae, named after the Scottish botanist William Forsyth (1737–1804) - royal head gardener and founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society.


There are about 11 species of Forsythia, most of them native to eastern Asia(one is native to Europe), all of them making stunning golden blossoms bushes.

Two of them: Forsythia × intermedia and Forsythia suspensa are commonly cultivated in gardens and parks. Mine is Forsythia × intermedia and I like it because is smaller with vivid flowers and upright habit. As usual, this season I forced some branches to bloom indoor. Although in Vancouver is not so cold, they are blooming in the garden when the spring occur, somewhere at the beginning of march. I know, Forsythia is not a showy bush the rest of the year, but I keep it in relative compact form, by pruning every spring its branches after they have flowered.

"Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia. Pure, undiluted, untouched joy." Anne Morrow Lindbergh

In December I had cut some branches and I forced them to bloom indoor. I put them in a glass with water with some hydrogen peroxide in a spot with natural light. After a week spent indoor, their flowers were blooming (they are super easy to root in water, too, but this was not my intention).

In the New Year Eve these flowering branches brightened my house. I added also some small branches taken from my laurel tree (laurus nobilis) to decorate my room. This small bouquet of flowers has found its place in my living-room in one of the small Chinese vase from my collection, to welcome the New Year as a symbol of Joy, Victory and Prosperity.