So familiar are lilacs in the dooryards of old houses that we are likely to assume this beloved shrub is a native of England or America.
Yet the very name, lilac, is foreign, a Persian adaptation from the Arabic, and the original home of our commonly grown Syringa vulgaris is probably half a world away.
Origins Of Lilacs
Lilacs came to Europe from Persia, and for years, it was thought they originated there.
As man’s knowledge of the world and its vegetation broadened, lilacs trees were discovered growing wild in parts of Europe and Asia, including Japan and the Himalayas.
Possibly camel trains first brought lilacs to Persia from the Far East. At any rate, they reached Europe before the 16th Century, for in 1597, Gerard wrote in his Herbal that they were growing in his London garden “in great abundance.”
By 1690, they were widely planted in Colonial gardens in the New World. And so thoroughly have they adapted themselves to American conditions that groups of lilacs mark the site of many an old farmhouse that has long since disappeared from the New England scene.
It is said that the winter appearance of the lilacs gives the farmer a clue to the size of his forthcoming fruit crops. If the buds are many and large, the crops of apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries also will be large.
Plant Name Origins
They applied this name to the blue shrubs growing on their hillsides. In time nilaj became lilaj, and, in Europe, lilac.
For an age when there was little or no consistency in plant names and spelling, Gerard gave the lilac its botanical name. Syringa. At first, he referred to the shrub as “Ill-hell or blew-pipe privit.”
The word “lilac” was originally a color rather than a plant name. Arabs dyed their cotton fabrics with indigo and called the resulting wonderful blue shade milk. The Persians followed the Arabs in coloring their materials and softened nilak to nilaj.
The second name is explained because pipe stems were sometimes made by driving the pith out of a straight bit of lilac wood.
Syringa comes from the Greek, meaning pipe or tube. In his final naming of the shrub, Gerard added to this the Latin caerulea for the sky or true blue.
Confusion Over Syringa
Unfortunately, there has been confusion over the name Syringa which has persisted almost to our time.
Mock oranges were great favorites in Europe before the days of the lilac. They, too, had hollow stems easily converted into pipe stems, and De l’Obel called mock-oranges Syringa.
Some years later, Tournefort seconded De l’Obel choice. But Linnaeus had the final word and decided otherwise.
He called lilacs Syringa and found the new name, Philadelphus, for the mock oranges. So, Syringa it is, but lilac is the name held dear by gardeners and poets for generations.
“Go down to Kew in lilac time,” runs the song. And we agree that the billows of fragrant blossoms are worth a journey wherever lilacs bloom.
44659 by Anne Dorrance