Forsythia suspensa
ζ*Forsythia suspensa (Thunb.) M. Vahl ζ*, forsythia, grows in many old and abandoned gardens throughout N.Z. and occasionally spreads from the original sites of cultivation by means of its freely produced layers which can result in large thickets. One recent collection from an old plantation in Hororata, inland Canterbury, was from a wild plant. A large deciduous shrub with prominently lenticellate, brown, hollow stems, and superposed buds; lvs petiolate, usually simple, sometimes 3-foliolate; lamina to c. 9 × 5 cm (often < 4 × 3 cm on long flowering branches), ± elliptic to broadly ovate, ± serrate (at least in distal 1/2); fls 1- c. 3, axillary; corolla golden yellow, 1.3- c. 2 cm long; lobes > tube; fr. capsular. F. suspensa has been largely superseded by its hybrid F. × intermedia Zabel and there are few gardens in many colder parts of N.Z. without one of the cvs of the hybrid. Collectively they are distinguished from F. suspensa by their ± upright and non-layering habit, the lamellate pith of the internodes of vegetative shoots, and often by their larger fls. Wild N.Z. plants of F. suspensa belong to var. sieboldii Zabel. (China, 1988).
