Winged Lilacs

American Lady butterfly

I was delighted, a few evenings back, to find my Korean lilac fittingly buried by gracefully-flitting brown-orange butterflies.  The lilac season in Kansas is already nearing its end, somewhat shockingly on this premature April date before they normally have even started blooming. Two different lilacs bring up the rear in my garden, the Syringa meyeri 'Dwarf Korean Lilac' pictured at the right, and the 'Josee' hybrid pictured below.

It is the Korean lilac that is the more fragrant of the two, and the American Lady butterflies (Vanessa virginiensis) were robbing it for nectar en masse, six or eight of them at a time.  The American Lady's are one of the Brush-footed butterfly families, and are of moderate size and, I would judge, merely moderate beauty as butterflies go.  I enjoy butterflies as a denizen of my garden, but I've never been as particularly fascinated or captured by them as I am, say, by rose varieties or bird species.  I've never made a concerted effort to be able to identify them on sight beyond the usual knowledge of when a butterfly might also be a swallowtail, or is instead a moth.  I can identify a Monarch, but I take no pride in that ability as I recognize that most young schoolchildren can identify Monarch butterflies due to the intense popular press the Monarch's enjoy.  Fly a few thousand miles as an extended family effort twice a year and it seems everyone thinks you're special.

My poor 'Josee' was neglected by the butterflies that evening, but I felt it was also making a special effort for my attention by showing off its subdued color hues against the variegated iris at its feet.  'Josee', as previously mentioned, may not be my most scented lilac, nor have the strongest coloration ('Yankee Doodle' has that distinction in my garden), nor does it have anything special like the picotee flowers of 'Sensation', but it does have one big advantage;  it was the first of the reblooming lilacs released and it really does, occasionally, dole out a panicle or two for my enjoyment in August.  Any lilac willing to defy its ancient nature to that degree for me will always have a place in my garden and my heart.

Way Ahead & Far Behind

It's madness.  Complete and undisguised madness.  My garden, and its gardener, are a full two weeks ahead of the normal cycle here.  In most years, I avoid starting the Spring cleanup of my garden beds until "Spring Break" here in the Little Apple.  The appearance of small green sprouts at that time often coincides with a little time off work and allows me some uninterrupted efforts at making my muscles sore and my garden tidy.  Often, at this date, the crocus and daffodils will just be poking up and I'll be noticing the first early weed children.  And the beginning of vegetable garden planting?  I'm normally a traditional Saint Patrick's Day planter, looking forward each year to the 17th not for drinking spirits, but for immersing my soul in the soil and thenceforth communing with the peas and seed potatoes.

This year the garden is pushing me out into the fast lane against my will.  Because the roses are leafing out and most of the Spring bulbs are blooming, I've been forced to begin cleanup earlier than ever.  I hate, I really hate, trimming off baby rose leaves once they've opened.  It does not bother me to trim the roses when the leaf buds are still tightly bound, but chopping off that shiny, unblackspotted green infant foliage is more than I can bear.  On Tuesday this week, I panicked and decided it all had to be done at once before my cleanup efforts resulting in trampling all the bulbs underfoot. So, I cleaned, and trimmed roses, and moved roses, and trimmed irises, and just generally gussied up the garden.

I moved, at last, a large 'Josee' lilac that was in the wrong place by first yanking it out by the roots with a rope and my Jeep, and then placing it into a distant site vacated inexplicably by a black currant bush.  The black currant had done well for several years, but this Spring it was not just suddenly and nearly dead, it was really most sincerely dead.  I cut off my coy, non-fruiting bittersweet couple ('Hercules' and 'Diana') in hopes of replacing them with a vine that would add another dimension to the garden beyond merely being a tall green tower.  I'm thinking perhaps of a clematis for the site.  And vegetable planting?  Oh yes, I admit, I planted peas and bib lettuce and broccoli and potatoes and onions a full 10 days before my normal planting time.  I blame the latter impatiences on my fellow Master Gardeners, all of whom were boasting about planting peas at our bimonthly meeting last week.

The forsythia watched all this activity while in full bloom, and the daffodils were already entering their twilight period, and we all knew it had to be done.  According to my historical notes going back to 2004, this early warmth is not unprecedented (2009 and 2005 were similarly early), but this is certainly earlier than the median year. I'm caught up, for now, on these garden chores, yet still far behind readying the Martin houses and spreading mulch and a multitude of other duties.  For now, however, I'm left hoping that Winter does not amuse itself by returning with a late fit of sadistic snow. 

Lilac Weeks

Lilac 'Annabel'

It has been lilac time for about 3 weeks total around the place, with the 7 lilacs that surround my garage pad scenting the air now through the entire garden and other more peripheral lilacs in the garden starting to add  their fragrance.  I take full advantage of the lilac tolerance for the alkaline Flint Hills soil and the blistering Kansas winds.  My lilac year really began a few weeks back with soft-pink Annabel, a S. hyacinthiflora hybrid right next to the steps leading out to the back.  'Annabel' is very lady-like in form and never suckers. 

 

 Lilac 'Maiden's Blush'



The main flush of lilacs then follows, with my S. hyacinthiflora that isn't, 'Maiden's Blush' next. 'Maiden's Blush' should be a blush pink lilac, but looks closer to blue to my eyes, so I'm not sure that my bush was labeled correctly.  It has to be a hybrid of some sort, though, because it flowers much more delicately and prolifically than the species S. vulgaris next to it.

Lilac 'Sensation'

The Syringa vulgaris cultivars are next in line to bloom, with 'Nadezhda', picotee-form 'Sensation', 'Wonderblue', and, of course, 'Yankee Doodle' piping up in the mix.   The S. vulgaris types are all grouped into the "French" lilac category, and it for some reason tickles me that "French" and the species name vulgaris are tied together.  S. vulgaris is native to the Balkans, but the species became connected to the French by the breeder Victor Lemoine, whose over 100 cultivars from the late 1800's and early 1900's are known as  "French Lilacs".

 

Lilac 'Nadzehda'



Nadezhda' is a soft lilac-blue S. vulgaris bred in Russia. The name means "Hope," presumably in Russian or some dialect.  He was bred by Leonid Alekseevitch Kolesnikov, a WWII veteran in the years after the war, supposedly the best of the seedlings from this man who only wanted Moscow to be a peaceful city with streets decorated by lilacs.  'Nadezhda' is very hardy and disease resistant.

Lilac 'Wonderblue'

Soft powder-blue 'Wonderblue', also known as 'Little Boy Blue' is reputed to be the bluest of the lilacs and it certainly is in my garden.  Although it is hard for me to rate the intensity of scent of lilacs, since most of them overwhelm my nose, I'd have to say that 'Wonderblue' is also the strongest and sweetest scented of all my lilacs. I believe 'Wonderblue' has become my favorite.



 



  

Syringa vulgaris 'Yankee Doodle' is one of the darkest purples of all Lilacs and he shares the royal lineage of lilacs bred by Father John Fiala.  Fiala was an eminent scholar and plant breeder who produced a number of lilacs and crabapples and who literally wrote the encyclopedia on both species (Lilacs: The Genus Syringa and Flowering Crabapples: The Genus Malus were both authored by Fiala).  Unfortunately, be forewarned, if you google "Father John Fiala," you have to get past the news stories of a recent Catholic priest of that name who has been accused of rape and other indecencies.  'Yankee Doodle' has single florets of strong substance that persist a long time in the garden, particularly in the Kansas winds.

  

Lilac 'Josee'

Although I have a couple yet to bloom at all, including hybrid lilac 'Tinkerbelle', bringing up the rear right now is the first repeat-blooming lilac 'Josee', a three-way dwarf hybrid of S. meyeri, S. patula, and S. microphylla.  Unfortunately, pale-pink 'Josee', while beautiful, does not really rebloom in my garden.  Yes, you will see a few smaller florets pop up here and there throughout the summer, but they are sporadic and incidental in terms of garden impact, only good to allow the wistful gardener a chance to occasionally sample the scent of April in August.  I suppose that should be reward enough for growing her, but the gardener is ever demanding of his plants.

Hot Lists

In these dog days of August, when gardening in the Flint Hills is confined only to the most critical tasks and then only in the early morning or late evening, Kansas gardeners turn our fantasies towards the future of the garden rather than facing the brown, crunchy gardens we have. 

At such times, the most useful action is not for the gardener to plan that new gazebo or the 10,000 gallon koi pond, but instead to begin to make a list of all of those smaller autumn changes that will improve next year's garden.

Syringa 'Josee'; gorgeous but too big

I've been making that list myself, noting that the 'Josee' lilac in my front landscape bed is now six feet tall and wide, is grossly out of proportion to the rest of the plants in the bed, and it obscures the front windows.  It needs to be moved this Fall to a more spacious and less conspicuous area. Several tall Miscanthus clumps in the front areas of another bed need to be moved to the back areas of those beds so that they don't obscure late summer blooms from a few of the roses.   The Fallopia japonica 'Variegata' in front is starting to make its run and it grows a bit too large and sprawls too much for its area and it needs moved as well. Two volunteer bush clematis (Clematis integrifolia) need to be potted up and given away to some unsuspecting soul or souls. Likewise, several traveling 'Tiger Eye' Sumac need to be either given away or eliminated from my viburnum bed. An 'Applejack' rose in my East rose bed has too much shade from the more massive shrub roses around it and needs to be moved into a more sunny area. A few borer-infested stems of an old French lilac in my forsythia bed need to be cut out.  And, since the cool, wet spring here taught me that my iris are struggling in my swampy, clay, mixed iris and daylily beds, I need to begin to move the iris into a better drained location where they can thrive instead of rot. 

Sounds like a busy Fall is coming, doesn't it?