Forsythia plants are deciduous shrubs. In some species the yellow four-petaled flowers, borne along the stems, appear before the leaves in early spring. The simple narrow leaves occasionally have three parts and are borne oppositely along the pithy or hollow stems. The fruit is usually a capsule.

A true sign of spring, forsythia is one of the first shrubs to bloom, providing a burst of color when gardeners need it most.

Forsythia is a genus of flowering plants in the olive family Oleaceae. There are about 11 species, mostly native to eastern Asia, but one native to southeastern Europe. Forsythia – also one of the plant’s common names – is named after William Forsythia.

Forsythia are deciduous shrubs typically growing to a height of 1–3 m (3 ft 3 in–9 ft 10 in) and, rarely, up to 6 m (20 ft) with rough grey-brown bark.

The flowers are produced in the early spring before the leaves, bright yellow with a deeply four-lobed flower, the petals joined only at the base. These become pendent in rainy weather thus shielding the reproductive parts. The fruit is a dry capsule, containing several winged seeds.

Snapdragons are tall, stately stalks, the upper reaches of which are covered with small, colorful blooms. The color range among snapdragons is wide; an amazing variety of pinks, peaches, yellows, blues, purples, whites, and many combinations thereof.

Planting snapdragons out can be among the first late winter gardening tasks. This fragrant specimen can handle frost, so start planting snapdragons early in the gardening season for most abundant bloom and performance.

Antirrhinum is a genus of plants commonly known as dragon flowers or snapdragons because of the flowers’ fancied resemblance to the face of a dragon that opens and closes its mouth when laterally squeezed. 

They are native to rocky areas of Europe, the United States, and North Africa. It is widely used as an ornamental plant in borders and as a cut flower. 

They are classified commercially as a range of heights: midget or dwarf (6–8 inches [15–20 cm]), medium (15–30 inches [38–76 cm]) and tall (30–48 inches [76–122 cm]). Removing the dead flowers, also called “deadheading”, is important to help them to continuously produce beautiful flowers throughout their growing season.

 They grow during their peak seasons of April to June and August to October and bloom in a variety of colors ranging from: white, yellow, orange, red, purple, pink and some multi-colored patterns.

In addition to growing the plants for cut flowers, the seeds have been used to extract edible oils, particularly in Russia, while the leaves and flowers have been considered to possess antiphlogistic (anti-inflammatory) properties and have been used in poultices.

Dandelion is a plant with yellow flowers. Taraxacum officinale is the most common variety of this plant, and it grows in many parts of the world. Botanists consider dandelions to be herbs. People use the leaves, stem, flower, and root of the dandelion for medicinal purposes.

Dandelion leaves, stems and flowers are often consumed in their natural state and can be eaten cooked or raw.

The Dandelion is a commonly found plant throughout the world. It is often seen as a nuisance plant or weed, but it can be edible. The leaves should be picked when small, so they are still sweet. You can also use the flowers to make a dandelion-based wine.

The flowers are flat and yellow, and the plant has a fleshy taproot. Taraxacum is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. The scientific and hobby study of the genus is known as taraxacology.

We’ll be sharing more about this flower in future.

Daffodils and other spring bulbs die back by midsummer. A classic early flower of spring, uses for daffodils extend well beyond providing cheerful color after the winter months. These pretty spring flowers can enrich your garden, improve pollination, and provide medical and health benefits.

Daffodils, also known by their botanical name narcissus, are easy and reliable spring-flowering bulbs. They multiply quickly and return to bloom again each spring, year after year. They are not fussy about soil, will grow in sun or part shade and are not bothered by deer, rabbits and other pesky critters.

Daffodils are one of the most common bulbs planted in the world. The most common color for these plants is yellow, with the bloom usually having two contrasting shades of yellow.

The flower blooms atop a stem that may be only three inches tall in dwarf varieties or 20 inches in taller plants. Did you know that daffodil is March Birth Flower?

Narcissus is a genus of predominantly spring flowering perennial plants of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. Various common names including daffodil, narcissus and jonquil are used to describe all or some members of the genus.

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Coneflowers are popular perennials with good reason. They are heat and drought resistant, easy to grow, bloom for months, make great cut flowers, and attract birds and pollinators.

The Coneflower is also known as Echinacea and is native to the United States. This plant produces a cone-shaped center that is surrounded by pink petals.

These flowers bloom over a long period of time, which makes them a great border flower. These plants prefer full sunlight to getting any shade.

There are many varieties and the purple coneflower is one of the popular ones. The flowers are collected together into single rounded heads at the ends of long peduncles.

The inflorescences have crateriform to hemispheric shaped involucres which are 12–40 mm wide. The phyllaries, or bracts below the flower head, are persistent and number 15–50.

The phyllaries are produced in a 2–4 series. The receptacles are hemispheric to conic. The paleae (chaffs on the receptacles of many Asteraceae) have orange to reddish purple ends, and are longer than the disc corollas.

The paleae bases partially surrounding the cypselae, and are keeled with the apices abruptly constricted to awn-like tips. The ray florets number 8–21 and the corollas are dark purple to pale pink, white, or yellow.

The tubes of the corolla are hairless or sparsely hairy, and the laminae are spreading, reflexed, or drooping in habit and linear to elliptic or obovate in shape. The abaxial faces of the laminae are glabrous or moderately hairy.

The flower heads have typically 200–300 fertile, bisexual disc florets but some have more. The corollas are pinkish, greenish, reddish-purple or yellow and have tubes shorter than the throats.

The pollen is normally yellow in most species, but usually white in E. pallida. The three or four-angled fruits (cypselae), are tan or bicolored with a dark brown band distally.

The pappi are persistent and variously crown-shaped with 0 to 4 or more prominent teeth.  Like all members of the sunflower family, the flowering structure is a composite inflorescence, with rose-colored (rarely yellow or white) florets arranged in a prominent, somewhat cone-shaped head – “cone-shaped” because the petals of the outer ray florets tend to point downward (are reflexed) once the flower head opens, thus forming a cone.

Plants are generally long lived, with distinctive flowers. The common name “cone flower” comes from the characteristic center “cone” at the center of the flower head. The generic name Echinacea is rooted in the Greek word ἐχῖνος (echinos), meaning hedgehog, in reference to the spiky appearance and feel of the flower heads.

We’ll be sharing more about this flower in future.

California poppies are annual plants with feathery gray-green foliage. The four-petaled flowers, borne on stems 20 to 30 cm (8 to 12 inches) long, are usually pale yellow, orange, or cream in the wild, but cultivated varieties are available in whites and various shades of red and pink.

California poppy is used alone or in combination with other herbs for anxiety, trouble sleeping (insomnia), aches, nervous agitation, and many other conditions, but there is no good scientific evidence to support these uses.

These plants are usually hardy and can even be found growing out of the cracks in paving slabs. They easily self-seed. The California Poppy or eschscholzia is a brightly colored flower with blue-green foliage.

It is a perennial or annual plant growing to 5–60 in (13–152 cm) tall with alternately branching glaucous blue-green foliage. The leaves are alternately divided into round, lobed segments. The flowers are solitary on long stems, silky-textured, with four petals, each petal 2 to 6 cm (0.79 to 2.36 in) long and broad; flower color ranges through yellow, orange and red[1] (with some pinks).

Flowering occurs from February to September in the northern hemisphere (spring, summer, fall). The petals close at night (or in cold, windy weather) and open again the following morning, although they may remain closed in cloudy weather.

The fruit is a slender, dehiscent capsule 3 to 9 cm (1.2 to 3.5 in) long, which splits in two to release numerous small (1.5–1.8 mm wide) black or dark brown seeds. It survives mild winters in its native range, dying completely in colder climates.

We’ll be sharing more about this flower in future.

It is not the same as ornamental marigolds of the Tagetes genus grown in vegetable gardens. Calendula is native to Asia and southern Europe and has been traditionally used in Ayurvedic and Unani systems of medicine.

Calendula blossoms form a neat ray of petals that gently unfold from a tight bud, opening up to radiate from the center as the sun hits them in the morning, and closing up when the sun sets.

The Calendula plant is also known as a pot marigold or English marigold. It tends to be fast growing and is a hardy plant but needs full sunlight. The flowers are a range of yellows, oranges, and even greens.

The plant can be easily grown by sowing seeds directly into the ground. Plants range from 12 to 28 inches in height.

Calendula is a genus of about 15–20 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants in the daisy family Asteraceae that are often known as marigolds.

They are native to southwestern Asia, western Europe, Macaronesia, and the Mediterranean.

We’ll be sharing more about this flower in future.

A childhood favorite Buttercups are one of the most common wild flowers.  Their abundant bright yellow flowers are hard to miss, inhabiting meadows, fields, by the roadside, in our gardens, swamps and bogs.

It has yellow, shiny petals, and grows wild in many places. It is poisonous to eat for humans and cattle, but when dry the poison is not active. The leaves are highly variable, depending on the species.

Buttercups belong to the genus Ranunculus. Some of these flowers are highly invasive, while other species are less so. The genus has annuals and perennials, and many feature the characteristic yellow flower that we picture upon hearing “buttercups,” but some are cream or red in color.

These are hardy plants that tolerate a range of conditions. Buttercups are mostly perennial, but occasionally annual or biennial, herbaceous, aquatic or terrestrial plants, often with leaves in a rosette at the base of the stem.

In many perennial species runners are sent out that will develop new plants with roots and rosettes at the distanced nodes. The leaves lack stipules, have petioles, are palmately veined, entire, more or less deeply incised, or compound, and leaflets or leaf segments may be very fine and linear in aquatic species.

The hermaphrodite flowers are single or in a cyme, have usually five (but occasionally as few as three or as many as seven) mostly green sepals and usually, five yellow, greenish or white petals that are sometimes flushed with red, purple or pink (but the petals may be absent or have a different, sometimes much higher number).

At the base of each petal is usually one nectary gland that is naked or may be covered by a scale. Anthers may be few, but often many are arranged in a spiral, are yellow or sometimes white, and with yellow pollen.

The sometimes few but mostly many green or yellow carpels are not fused and are also arranged in a spiral, mostly on a globe or dome-shaped receptacle. The fruits (in this case called achenes) may be smooth or hairy, winged, nobby or have hooked spines.

We’ll be sharing more about this flower in future.

Broom is a large, deciduous shrub, similar in appearance to gorse, but without the spines. This member of the pea family is common on heaths, in open woodlands and along hedgerows, and can also be found at the coast. Its bright yellow flowers appear in spring, from April to June, and smell of vanilla.

Brooms can be deciduous or evergreen and typically feature compound leaves with three leaflets. The yellow, purple, or white flowers are solitary or in small clusters. The fruit is a flat pod; the fruits of some species burst to scatter the seeds when ripe.

Broom or Cytisus is a deciduous plant that develops whippy stems. The flowers grow in thickly clustered bunches with yellow colored flowers that are fragrant and called “pea flowers”.

The scent is reminiscent of pineapple, and the plant can be grown to entwine with objects to make a focal point in your garden. Genisteae is a tribe of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants in the subfamily Faboideae of the legume family Fabaceae.

It includes a number of well-known plants including broom, lupine (lupin), gorse and laburnum. The tribe’s greatest diversity is in the Mediterranean, and most genera are native to Europe, Africa, the Canary Islands, India and southwest Asia.

However, the largest genus, Lupinus, is most diverse in North and South America. Anarthrophytum and Sellocharis are also South American and Argyrolobium ranges into India.

We’ll be sharing more about this flower in future.

These plants are similar to daisies but have bright yellow-orange flowers with a black center. Growing as annuals or short-lived perennials, black-eyed Susans are native to prairies and open woodlands and are attractive to both birds and butterflies.

Black-eyed Susans are native to North America and one of the most popular wildflowers grown. They tend to blanket open fields, often surprising the passerby with their golden-yellow beauty.

These plants range in height, with some flowers able to reach eight feet tall, while they spread to a mere three feet. Rudbeckia hirta is an upright annual (sometimes biennial or perennial) growing 30–100 cm (12–39 in) tall by 30–45 cm (12–18 in) wide.

It has alternate, mostly basal leaves 10–18 cm long, covered by coarse hair, with stout branching stems and daisy-like, composite flower heads appearing in late summer and early autumn.

In the species, the flowers are up to 10 cm (4 in) in diameter, with yellow ray florets circling conspicuous brown or black, dome-shaped cone of many small disc florets.

However, extensive breeding has produced a range of sizes and colours, including oranges, reds and browns.