BULLETIN NO. 7. 
The flowers of Syringa villosa are just falling. This inhabitant of 
northern China is in cultivation here a large and shapely shrub with good 
foliage and pale pink or nearly white flowers in large, compact, erect 
clusters which are produced in great profusion. The odor of the flowers 
is disagreeable. The Hungarian Lilac, Syringa Josikaea, is still in flow- 
er. This is a tall shrub with loose, unatttractive habit, small leaves, and 
long, slender, open clusters of small, purple flowers. This is perhaps the 
least attractive of all the Lilacs. The crossing, however, of these two 
species has given rise to a race of Lilacs which prolongs the season of 
flowering of the true Lilacs for nearly two weeks. This new race is 
called Syringa Henryi in honor of Monsieur L. Henry, at one time gar- 
dener at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, who made these hybrids. The 
best known of them is Lutece, so-called because it originated in Paris. 
This is a compact, fast-growing, large shrub with foliage resembling that 
of Syringa villosa and large clusters of rose-purple flowers, and is one of 
the handsome and desirable shrubs of recent introduction. 
There is a group of Lilacs which bloom even later than this hybrid. 
They are not true Lilacs, however, belonging to the section Ligustrina of 
the genus which differs from the true Lilacs in the short tube of the 
corolla from which the stamens protrude. There are three species of this 
group, all natives of northeastern Asia. They are shrubs or sometimes 
trees, and they all produce white, bad-smelling flowers in large clusters. 
They are just coming into bloom in the Lilac Group on the left-hand side 
of the Bussey Hill Road. The first to flower, Syringa amurensis, is a 
native of eastern Siberia, as its name indicates. It is a small tree, with 
flat, spreading or slightly drooping clusters of white flowers. The second 
species to flower, Syringa pekinensis , a native of northern China, is a 
shrub rather than a tree, although it sometimes reaches the height of 
thirty feet, with numerous stout stems more or less pendant at the ends 
and covered with bark peeling off in thin layers like that of some Birch 
tree. The long, narrow leaves hang gracefully and the half-drooping 
flower-clusters, which are flat and unsymmetrical, are smaller than those 
of the other species but are produced in great quantities. Syringa jap- 
onica , a native of the forests of northern Japan, is the last of the Tree 
Lilacs to flower and is really a tree often thirty or forty feet high, with 
a tall, stout trunk covered with lustrous bark like that of a Cherry tree, 
and a round-topped head. The leaves are large, thick and dark green, 
and the flowers are produced in large, erect, symmetrical clusters. Like 
the other species of this group, Syringa japonica loses its leaves early in 
the autumn without change of color. Syringa amurensis and Syringa 
pekinensis have not become common in gardens, but Syringa japonica 
has been quite generally planted in those of the eastern states. It is of 
interest that this remarkable tree was first sent to America and thence 
to Europe by a citizen of Massachusetts, the late William S. Clark, the 
first President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College and later the 
first President of the Agricultural College at Sapporo in Japan. In 
December, 1876, a small collection of seeds gathered in the neighborhood 
of Sapporo were received at the Arboretum from Colonel Clark and 
among them were seeds of this Lilac. The seedlings raised from this 
seed and their descendants are the native plants now cultivated in the 
United States and Europe. One of the original seedlings can be seen in 
the Apple Group on the right-hand side of the Forest Hills Road, the site 
