Lilacs

Lilacs can grow everywhere. Every soil. All exposures. Consider the lilacs of the field, how they grow. They are not fertilized, nor are they pruned, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

The lilac was once called the poor man's flower. The reason was that common lilacs were the chain letters of horticulture: you simply pried a rooted shoot from the base of a shrub and planted it somewhere else-just about anywhere else. Even mature lilacs could be moved. Lilacs tolerate drought, cold winters, dry, hot summers and almost any soil. They are undemanding and generous, the perfect guests. Thanks to lilac tenacity, they grow splendidly and abundantly-sometimes too abundantly.

Botanical lilac Growing garden lilacs Lilacs in containers Renovating and moving lilacs Pruning lilacs Pests and diseases of lilacs

About five centuries ago, S. vulgaris made its way westward from its home in the Balkans-garden by garden, perhaps-to the Atlantic. France, long enamored of perfumes, embraced it so fondly and transformed it so beautifully that in the common parlance, all S. vulgaris cultivars can be called French hybrids, no matter their origin. Granted savoir faire, the common lilac went forth renewed with larger clusters of bigger florets, sometimes double, and not just colored lilac or white but in hues of pale pink and pinkish blue through violet, magenta and purple. Fragrant flowers covered the shrubs from head to toe.

Syringa vulgaris was followed to American continent by a parade of exotic Syringa species, most discovered during the competitive age of plant exploration called by one Victorian "the era of Omnium-Gatherum." For two centuries starting around the mid-1700s, botanical explorers brought home thousands of now everyday garden plants, including magnolias, rhododendrons, forsythias, mock oranges and lilacs. It was a no-holds-barred era for searching, uprooting and shipping. From China came S. pekinensis in the mid-1700s, S. oblata in 1856, S. pubescens in 1880 and S. villosa in 1889. The largest lilac collections were gathered in St. Petersburg, Paris, the Arnold Arboretum in the United States and Kew Gardens in England.

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