Forsythia Fruit

While we plant forsythia for the flowers now, but forsythia was initially cultivated as a medicinal plant. The therapeutic part of forsythia is its inconspicuous fruit. It’s a traditional Chinese remedy for all kinds of overheating: toxins, fever, swollen lymph glands, flu, and other inflammations. It’s also used to relieve carbuncles (staph abscesses that are deeper and larger than boils).

 

It was among the most widely used medicinal food in ancient China due to its many health benefits, especially in relieving various respiratory tract conditions such as swelling of small air passages in the lung (bronchiolitis), tonsillitis, sore throat, fever, vomiting, heart disease, gonorrhea, pain and swelling (inflammation), and a severe skin rash with fever and vomiting caused by a bacterium (erysipelas). In some cases, Forsythia is given intravenously (by IV) combined with other herbs for treating bronchiolitis.

 

Chinese herbology, unlike European herbology, wasn’t interrupted by a few hundred years of practitioners being burned, tortured, and otherwise persuaded not to pursue their art. So Chinese herbology has had the time to develop highly complex ways of extracting active herbal ingredients.

Botanical Name: (Forsythia suspensa)
TCM: Lian Qiao
Also Known As: Golden bell
Order: Lamiales
Family: Oleaceae
Native Tio: China
Plant Part: Dried fruit, flower

Energetics: Cool, bitter, acrid
Meridians/Organs: Heart Lung Small intestine