14 
improvement on the older varieties, and all that is best in these plants 
can really be found in a dozen varieties or less. The Arboretum is 
often asked to furnish a list of the best varieties. This is difficult to 
do for what one person may like in the color of a flower another may 
not care for. The following, however, are good varieties, and a Lilac 
garden confined to these varieties would certainly be more beautiful 
than one in which the attempt was made to plant together all the 
varieties that have received names: Charles X (rosy lilac), Philemon, 
Ludwig Spath and Congo (dark red-purple), Macrostachya and Gloire de 
Moulins (double white), Marie Legraye (single white), Madame Lemoine 
and Miss Ellen Willmott (pink), Justi (blue). It must be remembered 
that the Arboretum collection of these plants is intended to show what 
not to plant as well as to show the most desirable varieties to plant. 
Next to the common Lilac the Persian Lilac, Syringa persica . is probably 
the best known species. It reached England fifty years later and ever 
since has been a popular garden plant as it flowers after the common 
Lilac. There are pale rosy purple and white-flowered varieties and 
one with deeply-divided leaves (var. laciniata). A little more than a 
hundred years ago a hybrid between the common and the Persian Lilac 
appeared in the Botanic Garden at Rouen. This proved to be one of 
the handsomest, hardiest and most vigorous of all Lilacs, recalling its 
Persian parent in its small flowers produced, however, in enormous 
clusters, its slender branches and narrow leaves, while the color of 
the flowers shows the influence of Syringa vulgaris. Unfortunately, 
under the supposition that this plant had come from China, it was 
named Syringa chinensis, the name under which it must be known; it 
is also sometimes called Syringa rothomagensis. There is a variety 
with pale nearly white flowers (var. alba). A Lilac from northern 
China, S. pubescens, is still too little known in gardens; it is a tall 
shrub with erect stems, small leaves and broad clusters of pale lilac- 
colored flowers remarkable for the long tube of the corolla and for 
their delicate fragrance. For this fragrance, if for no other reason, 
this Lilac should find a place in every northern garden. Another Lilac 
from northern China, S. villosa, is a large vigorous shrub with pale 
rose-colored or nearly white flowers which have a distinctly disagree- 
able odor. The flowers, however, are handsome and abundant, and this 
plant should be cultivated for it is the last to bloom of the true Lilacs. 
The crossing of this plant in Paris a few years ago with the small- 
flowered Hungarian Lilac, S. Josikaea, produced a race of hybrids of 
extraordinary beauty. The general name for these hybrids is Syringa 
Henryi, so named in honor of the gardener who produced them. One 
of this hybrid race, called Lutece, is one of the most beautiful of all 
garden Lilacs, although its Hungarian parent is perhaps the least 
beautiful of the whole genus and the last species most breeders would 
have chosen for the production of a new race of garden plants. The 
beauty of Lutece shows that it is impossible to foretell what hybrids 
may produce and makes it reasonable to hope that by the use in this 
way of some of the new species discovered by Wilson in western 
China new hybrid races may be obtained of distinct value as garden 
plants. All the new species from western China are growing well and 
