When to prune forsythia?
- Botanical name
- Forsythia intermedia
- Family
- Oleaceae
Forsythia is pruned from April to May. It is planted from September to May.
Forsythia is a woody perennial.
Forsythia forms the flower buds for the coming spring over the summer, on this year's shoots. A later cut takes them off. The oldest branches are cut out at the base, and the whole shrub may also be cut down to the ground.
The shrub spreads wider than it stands high.
Forsythia carries its flower buds through the whole winter and a severe winter can destroy them. The wood comes through undamaged.
Forsythia through the year
- pruning
- planting
In short
Growing conditions
Is forsythia toxic to cats and dogs?
No. Forsythia is not toxic to cats and dogs.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- The plant dies suddenly, often in mid season and without any decline beforehand. Peel the bark at ground level and under it there is a white or cream sheet of fungal tissue, thin as the skin of a mushroom. In the soil there are black or brown strands like bootlaces. In late summer and autumn tufts of honey brown mushrooms with a whitish ring on the stalk appear by the stumps or over dead roots.
- Prevention
- The fungus spreads through the soil with its strands, from a few centimetres to a good hand's width below the surface, and infects the roots of a living plant when it touches them. So do not leave stumps and dead roots in the ground. No plant is completely resistant, but privet, lilac, viburnum, weigela, forsythia, butterfly bush, rhododendron, thuja and walnut are particularly susceptible.
- What to do
- There are no products. The only thing that works is digging out and removing every infected root and stump, which takes away the food without which the strands in the soil do not grow. A vertical barrier of rubber or thick plastic sheet, buried about half a metre deep and standing a few centimetres above ground, stops the spread into an unaffected part of the garden.
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Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Oleaceae).
Sources about the plant: DGUV Information 202-023 „Giftpflanzen, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Oregon State University, Royal Horticultural Society, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026.