Lilacs and Privets 



the Common Privet is a native of Great Britain. The 

 story of how the plant came to be called " Privet " is 

 curious and a little involved. There seems to have 

 been an extraordinary confusion between the primrose 

 and the Privet in the matter of their names. Privet is 

 a softening of the name " primet," and this in its turn is 

 an abbreviation of " primprint," an old English flower- 

 name that originally belonged to the primrose and was 

 derived from "prime printemps," signifying "first in 

 the springtime." The primrose's Latin name here was, 

 in Elizabethan days, Ligustrum, but on the Continent 

 this was given to the Privet ; so in the interchange of 

 botanical terms with foreign countries, when the shrub 

 was alluded to as Ligustrum, the term " primprint," 

 which had always been associated with it in English 

 minds, became also referred to the shrub, and it was 

 first called the Primet and then the Privet. 



Soil and Cultivation. There are no shrubs easier to 

 cultivate than the Privets, and few less exacting as to 

 soil. They are propagated from cuttings with the 

 utmost readiness. 



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