By Steven Foster – It’s been such a schizophrenic winter as far as the weather goes, or as I call it, the new normal, leading Mother Nature to play tricks on humans. As you drive, bike or walk around town, you may see shrubs with yellow flowers and casually assume that forsythias just don’t know when to put away their winter genes and get out their spring wardrobe. But it is likely not a forsythia that you are seeing at all, rather, of all things, it is probably a species of jasmine, a plant group best known for its subtropical representatives with an intoxicating scent; a staple in perfumery.
Known in horticultural parlance as winter jasmine or naked jasmine, it is an Asian shrub Jasminum nudiflorum. The species name nudiflorum means naked flower. The small, shiny oval leaves of this shrub clustered in groups of three drop off early in the fall, exposing evergreen angular stems. Even a month ago, the flower buds were swollen. They are now blooming, as they do every year regardless of what the thermometer says. It is a winter-blooming shrub.
In 1844, the British botanical explorer, Robert Fortune sent specimens from Nanjing, China, to the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew. Fortune wrote, “a very ornamental dwarf shrub… perfectly hard in this country [China]. It is deciduous; the leaves falling off in its native country early in autumn, and leaving a number of prominent flower buds, which expand in early spring, often when snow is on the ground.” Fortune had been hired by the British East India Company to clandestinely collect live cuttings and seeds of all the tea varieties in China and send them to the British territories in India, leading to the beginnings of India’s tea plantations. He introduced many Chinese plants to Western horticulture.
In English gardens it became a favorite shrub planted atop walls, with its cascading vine-like trailing stems, highlighting their brilliant winter display of tubular yellow flowers. Winter jasmine soon made its way to America. By 1855 it was listed in an American nursery catalog and became as favorite of Southern gardens. No doubt, in the late 19th century, with its abundant stone retaining walls established, unnamed souls intent on beautifying Eureka Springs thought this was an ornamental shrub of choice. Hence, we still enjoy this heirloom winter-blooming beauty today.