Syringa vulgaris - Lilacs

This post, 'Syringa vulgaris' - was originally uploaded and written by Tyra at the blog The greenhouse in Tyra's Garden http://tyras-greenhouse.blogspot.com/ABC Wednesday this week it is S for ...Syrén or Syringa vulgaris in latin.

In Swedish we call them Farmer Lilacs (Bondsyrener) I guess they are called that because they are so easy to grow here and everyone can afford them and they are easy to propagate as well. Here at Engarn Village I think all the gardens got them and along the village road there are a lot as well.

The last thing I did yeasterday evening was to cut the lawn and that is so wonderful to do when the fruit trees and the Lilacs are all in bloom, the scents are wonderful. Pure joy to ride around on the lawn mower listening to good music and breathing the evening air and scents. This picture of the greenhouse is from this very morning when I was catching my S for this week. Syringa vulgaris.

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Garden History

Lilacs— both Syringa vulgaris and S. x persica, the finer, smaller "Persian Lilac", now considered a natural hybrid— were introduced into European gardens at the end of the sixteenth century, from Ottoman gardens, not through botanists exploring the Balkan habitats of S. vulgaris. The Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, is generally credited with supplying lilac slips to Carolus Clusius, about 1562. Well-connected botanists, like the great herbalist John Gerard, soon had the rarity in their gardens: Gerard notes that he had lilacs growing “in very great plenty” in 1597, but lilacs were not mentioned by Shakespeare, and John Loudon was of the opinion that the Persian lilac had been introduced into English gardens by John Tradescant the elder. Tradescant's Continental source for information on the lilac , and perhaps ultimately for the plants, was Pietro Andrea Mattioli, as one can tell from a unique copy of Tradescant's plant list in his Lambeth garden, an adjunct of his Musaeum Tradescantianum; it was printed, though probably not published, in 1634: it lists Lilac Matthioli. That Tradescant's "lilac of Mattioli's" was a white one is shown by Elias Ashmole's manuscript list, Trees found in Mrs Tredescants Ground when it came into my possession (1662): "Syringa alba".
In the American colonies lilacs were introduced in the eighteenth century. Peter Collinson, F.R.S., wrote to the Pennsylvania gardener and botanist John Bartram, proposing to send him some, and remarked that John Custis of Virginia had a fine "collection", which Ann Leighton interpreted as signifying Common and Persian Lilacs, in both purple and white, "the entire range of lilacs possible" at the time.

This text is from wikipedia Syringa vulgaris

Lilacs at Engarn.

Read about more great ABC Wednesday's S here.

Have a great Wednesday my friends!

LOLove Tyra