In the Horsford catalog the section on lilacs opens with a wonderful reflection on their beauty and longevity, written by Horsford’s Leo Roberts for a Spring 1989 Leaflet, and worth re-reading every year. If you don’t get a copy of our catalog for any other reason, get it for this. And get a lilac or two to go with it.

Leo’s sentiment is echoed by the first words in Lilacs for the Garden (Jennifer Bennet, Firefly Books, 2002):

“Plant a lilac, and you plant a memory.
Lilacs are the flowers of reminiscence,
perhaps because of their fragrance,
so linked for us with winter
gone and summer coming, perhaps
because of their brief season of fabulous
bloom or perhaps because our
grandparents grew them. Whatever
the reason, you can ask almost anyone
how they like lilacs, and they
will tell you about lilacs past.”

Lilacs are called “the poor man’s flower” – and “the chain letter of horticulture” because one can simply pry a rooted shoot from the base of the shrub and plant it somewhere else – just about anywhere else.

The genus name Syringa is from the Greek for pipe or channel and references hollow stems (it was called the pipe tree when introduced in England). Syrinx, a Greek nymph, was transformed into a hollow reed (to avoid somebody for good reason no doubt) which was then used for Pan’s pipes so she lives on in music. There is actually some doubt as to whether this applies to lilacs, which do not have hollow pith, or to mockorange, which used to be called Syringa, and does…

There are 23± species of lilacs, i.e. wild lilacs. The majorities are native to the mountains of Asia – from Afghanistan through China to Japan. Two species are native in eastern Europe
– one of which is S. vulgaris, the common lilac. The native, wild S. vulgaris has flowers borne in large, open sprays with panicles reportedly up to 2 feet in length.

At least in part as a result of travel connected with the Crusades, S.vulgaris migrated from the Balkans to Atlantic Europe and Britain. John Parkinson describes the pipe tree in his 1629 herbal as “blew or violet coloured flowers on a long stalke, of the bignesse and fashion of a Foxe taile.”

The common purple lilac S. vulgaris and its white variety S. vulgaris var. alba in the form we plant today are a product of selection over time. Common lilacs moved to North
America with the settlers, and still survive. Some of the original lilacs at Mackinac Island, Michigan are more than 250 years old. One views the flowers from second story windows.
Lilac breeding had begun in earnest in Europe, Russia, and North America by the late 1800s. There were 300 cultivars (cultivated varieties) world wide by 1900, 830 by 1960, and close to 4000 cultivars by 2001.

Victor and Marie Lemoine in Nancy, France were the first to hybridize lilacs in an organized and extensive way. It was Marie who actually made the crosses – apparently she was better at delicate coordination than Victor – and they created the first large-flowered double lilacs. A number of their cultivars are still considered among the very best.

Horsford’s grows the elegant, white ‘Mme. Lemoine’, 1890, named for Marie; dark magenta ‘Charles Joly’, 1896, considered by many to be the best purple; and ‘Monge’ with single, dark reddish-purple florets and short, broad flower clusters was introduced in
1913. Their son Emile, who introduced ‘Katherine Havemeyer’ in 1922, carried on their work. ‘Katherine’ is characterized by big panicles of tightly packed, very fragrant, double lilac-pink florets, and is considered “quite first class”. After Emil, grandson Henri continued
the Lemoine tradition until the nursery closed in 1955. Victor and Marie also created the first hyacinthiflora hybrids in 1876.

Frank Skinner, a Manitoba cattle rancher who developed lilacs, fruit trees, lilies, and roses for Canadian prairie conditions in his Hardy Plant Nursery, introduced a hardier version of the hyacinthifloras. He called his superhardy hyacinthiflora hybrids “American lilacs”. Horsford’s grows Skinner’s S. x hyacinthiflora ‘Pocahontas’, introduced in 1935, and one of his most popular lilacs, producing an early profusion of single, violet-purple, fragrant flowers. The “American” hyacinthifloras with their compact shape are considered overall as better quality lilacs than the Lemoine crosses.

To get back to Syringa vulgaris cultivars grown by Horsford’s and created by other notable breeders:

‘Krasavitsa Moskvy’ (‘Beauty of Moscow’) – an offspring of an 1891 Lemoine lilac ‘Belle de Nancy’ – was introduced by Leonid Kolesnikov, an outstanding Russian horticulturist, in 1947.

Kolesnikov particularly liked the Lemoine et Fils lilacs and was working on improvements to them, with hundreds of cross-bred seedlings in his Moscow garden, when WWII broke out and he went into combat. He was badly wounded, and a bomb destroyed his garden and his plants while he was away. He survived, began again, and introduced a number of outstanding lilacs that are very highly praised, with superb subtleties in coloration.

Just as in Vermont, “after the long, cold Russian winter the colorful bloom of lilacs brought vitality, freshness and fragrance to the streets, parks, and gardens…” ‘Krasavitsa Moskvy’ celebrates spring with pink buds opening into fragrant,
densely petaled, creamy white flowers tinged pink with a silvery, opalescent cast.

‘Ludwig Spaeth’ (‘Andenken an Ludwig Späth’ – also called ‘Souvenir of Ludwig Spaeth’ in English) was introduced by Späth in 1883. It has single, lightly fragrant, purple florets in long, erect, slender panicles. It is still a highly recommended, widely available, and very popular lilac.

Breeder John Dunbar, who created the lilac gardens (still in existence) at
Highland Park in Rochester, NY in the 1890s, introduced the blue-purple ‘President Lincoln’ in 1916. The Park holds a lilac festival for 10 days every May. ‘President Lincoln’ is one of the most popular American lilacs of all time – and the most popular of the “blue”
lilacs, though there are truer blues.

‘Sensation’ is aptly named. It is a genetic mutant, the first bicolor, and probably the most photographed of all lilacs. Introduced in Holland by
Eveleens Maarse in 1938, it was a mutation of the lavender ‘Hugo de Vries’ that occurred in their greenhouses during the process of forcing lilacs for Christmas flowering. The single florets are rich purple with each petal edged (picoteed) in white.

The neat thing about ‘Sensation’ is that it is a periclinal chimera. The chimera in Greek mythology is a creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. In botany it is a plant formed by tissues of different genetic composition, and can occur through mutation or graft-hybridization. In the case of ‘Sensation’ a mutation occurred and the tissues of the original plant and the mutation both exist within the plant. Thus the variations in ‘Sensation’ depend on the number of layers of different tissue that are passed along in the propagation. In periclinal chimeras certain cell layers have no pigment and appear white (the picoteed edge); the pigmented cells are purple (like ‘Hugo de Vries’). If there is only one layer of pigmented cells the color may be pale purple. When ‘Sensation’ is propagated using micropropagation techniques one will have, beside true ‘Sensation’, a small percentage of ‘Hugo de Vries’ plants and a small percentage of dirty-white flowering plants. If wood appears that produces “unsensational” pale flowers, it should probably be pruned off.

Syringa x prestoniae ‘Donald Wyman’ — the Preston lilacs are named for Isabella Preston, who was the first professional woman plant hybridist in Canada, and by 1916 was part of a
select circle of Canadian plant hybridists because of her international award- winning lilies. This was a time when it was difficult for a woman to get paid employment in the sciences but, working at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, she created over 200 hybrids of
lilies, roses, the Roseybloom crabapples, mockoranges, Siberian iris – and lilacs –
apparently her least favorite plant, and the one she is best remembered for. The Preston lilacs, which are late-blooming, disease-resistant, and very hardy (to zone 2), were developed from crosses between the species lilacs S. villosa and S. reflexa, and were usually named for Shakespearean characters. Donald Wyman, however, was a horticulturist at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum for thirty-three years, wrote a number of books including Wyman’s Gardening Encyclopedia, and received the highest horticultural awards available in Britain and the U.S. This excellent lilac is Preston’s tribute to Wyman. Planting a Preston lilac or two honors Miss Preston and extends your lilac season by several weeks.

Lilacs like sun, space, and well-drained soil. They are supposed to prefer slightly alkaline soils but “can’t read books” and seem to tolerate the more acidic northeast soils well. They can be transplanted into old age – if they are large a backhoe or tree space is a good idea, and root-pruning in two sessions a year or two in advance. They usually tolerate summer transplanting, except during bloom, but don’t wait too late in the fall. Root growth becomes
negligible below 40-45F soil temperature and the plant can’t get a grip. Fertilize, if you feel you must, only in spring, right after bloom-and-prune time.

References:
Lilacs for the Garden, Jennifer Bennet, Firefly Books, 2002.
Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, Michael A. Dirr, 5th ed. Stipes Publishing,
Champaign, Illinois, 1998.
Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing edited by Edwinna von Baeyer and Pleasance Crawford, Random House of Canada,1995.