Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. Ill NO. 6 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. JUNE I, 1917 
Lilacs. The Lilac of old gardens with its purple or white fragrant 
flowers, hardy, long-lived, easily increased by shoots from the roots, 
resistant to all sorts of climate, known to every boy and girl brought 
up in the country, is in New England what “The May’’ (Crataegus) is 
in Old England, the best loved of all shrubs. It is loved but not re- 
spected. No one hesitates to break down a Lilac-bush for the flowers. 
Without the protection of special policemen the Arboretum Lilacs 
would be exterminated in a day. It is impossible to protect Lilac 
flowers in public parks and city squares, and every year city hawkers 
in search of them extend their depredations further into the suburbs; 
and in Lilac season automobiles loaded with stolen mutilated Lilac 
branches covered with wilted flowers are common objects along all the 
roads leading into Boston. 
The first Lilac to get a place in European gardens was the plant 
which only slightly modified is still to be found growing in the neigh- 
borhood of many old New England farm-houses. This plant (Syringa 
vulgaris) reached western Europe in 1597 by the way of Constanti- 
nople and Vienna. It was long believed to have come originally from 
Persia and it is only in comparatively recent years that it has been 
known that this Lilac was a native of the mountain forests of Bul- 
garia. Plants raised at the Arboretum from seeds of the wild Bulga- 
rian plants are growing with the other Lilacs in the collection, and it 
is interesting to compare the flowers of the wild type with those which 
cultivators have produced in the last half century. Another Lilac, the 
so-called Persian Lilac {Syringa persica), a native of the region from 
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