LILACS for COLORADO 
By Mitton J. KEEGAN 
“The lilac is popular throughout the 
world, but I believe that nowhere is it 
as beautiful as in the United States and 
Canada. In those countries the con- 
trast between the dry warm summers 
and the very rigorous winters lends it- 
self wonderfully to the development 
of the lilac and the richness of its 
bloom.” (1) This statement, applicable 
to much of Colorado, was made by 
Emile Lemoine of Nancy, France, who 
with his father Victor Lemoine, (2) 
originated a very large percentage of 
the most beautiful modern varieties of 
the “‘old-fashioned”’ common lilac. The 
terms “French lilacs’ and ‘French 
hybrids” have, as a consequence, been 
loosely applied to the large group of 
improved modern varieties of the com- 
mon lilac (Syringa vulgaris) in com- 
merce today.(3) 

It was three-quarters of a century 
ago that the German army overran 
Nancy, France, in the Franco-Prussian 
War. Within that city was a garden 
where Victor Lemoine, then nearing 
Linacs, PRESIDENT GREvVyY, BELLE DE 
NANcY AND TOUSSAINT L’?OUVERTURE 
pieces and went right on working until 
the enemy began their homeward jour- 
ney back towards the Rhine. When 
the siege lifted the first of the French 
fifty, and his wife had been working for 
twenty years. They picked up the 
(1) Alice Harding, “Lilacs in My Garden.”’ Macmillan, 1933, 
(2) ‘Pierre Louis Victor Lemoine, the greatest hybridizer the world has known. He came by 
his talents naturally. He was descended from a long line of gardeners and nurserymen. 
Born at Delme in Lorraine, October 21, 1823; he went through school and college and then 
devoted several years traveling and working in the leading horticultural establishments of 
Europe .... In 1850 . . . he settled down at Nancy both as a florist-gardener and as a 
married man. . . . As early as 1885 France honored him with its Legion of Honor and in 
1894 advanced him to the grade of officer. . . . He died in his 89th year, . Scarcely a 
garden in this new world or the old but bears some flowering monument to him. . . .”” Rich- 
ardson Wright, “Men Who Make Our Flowers—Victor Lemoine,” House & Garden, April, 
1937, p. 66; see also T. A. Havemeyer’s “How the Modern Lilac Came to Be: Recounting 
the story of Mr. Lemoine’s work,’’ Garden Magazine, May, 1917, 25:232. 
(3) ‘Introduced into cultivation before 1560, the old-fashioned lavender-colored lilac (Syringa 
vulgaris) and its white-flowered form have been grown so long in cultivation that many 
variations have arisen. From this early date, the hundreds of pink, red and deep purple - 
