Maggie's Farm

It's a little late in the year for Forsythia, guys. They're more a February-early March bloomer.

Your pic IS poor, but it looks like a broom to me, maybe Scotch Broom. The way to tell is, look at the flowers and leaves and last years growth.

Are the flowers sulphur-yellow in color and pea-like in form? Is the leaf compound, with leaflets? And are the stems green with chlorophyl? If you answer yes to all of these, it's a Broom.

If it is Scotch broom, you have an invasive, temperate weed in your patch. You might want to pull it!

Cytisus scoparius.

In July little green 'beanpods' will form. They will ripen to black in early August, then, as the pods dry in the warm August sun, they ripen and then pop open violently. The two sides of the pod coil tightly as they explode open. You can hear the hard seeds rain down on the underbrush tens of feet away.

This ability to propel seed far away from the Mother plant, and the toxic coating on the legume's seeds, are the properties that make this plant so invasive.

Enjoy it in bloom, then cut it back to remove the seed pods before they eject their seed loads, and it can be an attractive addition to the shrubbery.

Here in the Northwest, though, we pull it on sight!

I spent April this year working on a landscape crew in Tillamook, Oregon. Most of our work was around private homes right on the north coast beaches, like Rockaway and Cannon Beaches.

The biggest problem-plants there just off the surf-zone were Scotch Broom and English Ivy. We hauled tons of both off to the dump. I'd know that plant anywhere.