[16] Forsythia suspensa, the first to be noticed by a Westerner, was seen in a Japanese garden by the botanist-surgeon Carl Peter Thunberg, who included it (as a lilac) in his Flora Japonica 1784.

Thunberg's professional connections lay with the Dutch East India Company, and F. suspensa reached Holland first, by 1833.

Not all the varieties of suspensa are splaying and drooping, best seen hanging over a retaining wall; an erect form found by Fortune near Peking in 1861 was for a time classed as a species—F. fortunei.

The Scottish plant-hunter Robert Fortune "discovered" it—in a mandarin garden of the coastal city of Chusan (Zhoushan)—before he ever saw it growing wild in the mountains in Zhejiang province.

[16] Forsythia × intermedia, as its name suggests, is a hybrid of F. suspensa and F. viridissima, introduced in continental Europe about 1880.

[16] This cultivar has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit,[17] as have F. × intermedia Week End 'Courtalyn'[18] and F. Marée d'Or 'Courtasol'.

[16] Forsythia are early spring-flowering shrubs with yellow blooms,[20] often seen in private gardens, public landscaping works and parks—notably during Eastertide), when some of the plants are nicknamed Easter Tree in honor of the coming spring.

[7] Vegetative propagation is usually achieved via cuttings, taken from green wood after flowering in late spring to early summer.

[22] Low-hanging boughs that touch the ground will often take root, adding to the total mass of the plant, but can be removed for transplanting.