Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL III 
NO. 12 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN. MASS. JULY 6, 1917 
Philadeiphus. Among the shrubs which give beauty to northern 
gardens in early summer Philadeiphus, or as it is popularly called 
Syringa and Mock Orange, is perhaps only surpassed in interest and 
value by the Rose and the Laurel (Kalmia). It is only the abundant 
and often delightfully fragrant white flowers of the plants of this genus 
which are beautiful; for the fruit is a dry capsule; the habit of the 
plants is not different from that of many other shrubs, and their 
leaves fall in early autumn without having changed their color. The 
plants are natives of eastern and western North America, Japan, China, 
the Himalayas and southeastern Europe. In the Arboretum collection 
there are some thirty species, several distinct varieties of some of the 
species, and a large number of hybrids for in few genera of plants 
has the hybridizer been more successful in producing new and valuable 
forms. Plants in this group are in bloom in the Arboretum during 
fully six weeks, the earliest being a form of Philadeiphus Schneckii 
named variety Jackii for Mr. J. G. Jack, who discovered it in Korea, 
which in ordinary seasons opens its flower-buds during the last week 
of May and the latest, or almost the latest, the hybrid P. insignis, 
which does not flower before the middle of July. Among the species 
which seem best worth a place in the garden is the European species 
P. coronarius, the Mock Orange of old gardens, which was cultivated 
in England before the end of the sixteenth century and was probably 
one of the first shrubs brought to America by the English. It is a 
large and hardy shrub and is chiefly valuable for the fragrance of its 
flowers which are faintly tinged with yellow. A number of seminal 
forms of this plant are cultivated, including one with yellow leaves, 
one with double flowers and one with narrow, willow-like leaves, but 
45 
