Intense blue sky today (Thursday 28 May). I went for a walk in the afternoon to post a birthday card. Along a side street I passed, I noticed this house surrounded by an incredible "hedge" of lilacs (syringa) in bloom. (In Swedish we call them syrén.) In the background you can see that there are lilacs all along the opposite side of the garden as well.
Yesterday, I also took the photos below of a "cluster" of lilacs in the old cemetery. Standing there, it did look to me like branches with two different colours of flowers are actually coming from the same trunk down at the bottom. Not all easy to tell! - but googling it now, AI informs me that lilacs can indeed be grafted:
Yes, lilac trees can be grafted. In fact, many commercial "tree form" lilacs (where a shrub is grafted high onto a single trunk) and unique multicolored varieties are produced this way. Grafting is done to change the plant's growth habit, control its size, or combine multiple flower colors onto a single base.
Lilacs are small trees, ranging in size from 2 to 10 metres (6+1⁄2 to 33 ft) tall, with stems up to 20 to 30 centimetres (8 to 12 in) diameter.
The usual flower colour is a shade of purple (often a light purple or "lilac"), but white, pale yellow and pink, and even a dark burgundy color are also found.
The genus Syringa was first formally described in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus and the description was published in Species Plantarum.
The genus name Syringa is derived from Ancient Greek word syrinx meaning "pipe" or "tube" and refers to the hollow branches of one species. - The English common name "lilac" comes from the French lilac.
Sooo pretty under that beautiful blue sky!
ReplyDeletethese are totally awesome! sorry for the overuse of that word. It fits! I did not realize they got this big or that they grafted them. the house is lovely and what a great idea, privacy and beauty. wow, it seems I know a lot of overused words
ReplyDeleteThanks Sandra - and I do think that hedge of lilacs deserves to be called awesome! :)
DeleteThey are beautiful, I haven't seen many here sadly.
ReplyDeleteMaybe not the right climate for them? (I have not investigated that far...)
DeleteStunning! I have never seen any of these darker ones, only lavender and white here.
ReplyDeleteGinny, the pale lavender are the most common here too.
DeleteMy mum's favourite scent was Lilac (and Lily of the Valley) but she was never able to grow a tree, the mid north climate just didn't work for it. I like the deeper purple flowers in the pictures.
ReplyDeleteRiver, my p. grandparents had lilacs in their garden but my own parents did not.
DeleteThe scent along that "hedge" of lilac must have been quite overwhelming! Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteFunny about the name - in German, it is called Flieder, but in Swabian and Baden's dialects people say "Zerenge", obviously coming from Syringa.
My former neighbour, the elderly lady whose beautiful garden I look right on from my kitchen window, was proud of her Flieder. Every year, it has blossoms in white, lilac and deep purple, and she said that they were all coming from the same shrub and that it had grown that way naturally, without her doing anything to it.
I have not yet seen a pale yellow one; maybe they simply don't exist around here.
Meike, I did not know the German name. (If I ever saw it in a text I may have wrongly have assumed it to refer to a totally different plant - which I now see you call Holunder, while we call it 'fläder'!)
DeleteI have one in my garden. It always cheers me to see it each year.
ReplyDeleteAddy, for me it signals the beginning of summer :)
DeleteLooks great.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous! I bet they smell wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOh how beautiful. I can just imagine the wonderful scent of the breeze as you passed by.
ReplyDeleteWorth a Thousand Words
The smell of a lilac is such a wondrous thing! It reminds me of England. We often see signs of grafting on rose bushes here.
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