In season, the lilacs are an extravagance of color and fragrance, especially when you have something like 437 plants, which represent 138 different species and varieties, as the New York Botanical Garden does in its Lilac Lilas de Burn Family Lilac Lilac collection.
After they finish blooming, thought, the lilacs can present an extravagantly messy consequence, pushing the garden to intervene in the name of the order.
Take out the scissors (track: the long -range version with a telescopic handle is especially useful for this task). Sharpen your observation powers while addressing the service, said Melissa Finley, the woody plants curator of the Botanical Garden. Deadheading can be the obvious task, but there are more subtle clues to discover about the performance of its bushes, or perhaps extend its lilac season and its color palette.
Mrs. Finley always applies to that careful child to the historical collection of the garden, a whole world of lilac in five in five Acres planted for the first time in 1949 and renewed in 2016.
Something that is looking for: which older plants have grown their legs and need to start a rejuvenation cycle that begins at the end of next winter? Is there a damaged voice or signs of the work last season by pests like Lilac Borer?
And what plants are simply not the performance as well as they did and could replace, now that newly normal climate patterns have tasks that are maintained? With not so cold winters consistently, some of the earliest block varieties in particular may be very out of time or experience injuries in their opening outbreaks in aberrant swings of temperature of the late winter.
“Lilas are really a big child for this type of conversation,” said Finley. She explained why: the long leg has been used to track phenology: the calendar of nature or recurring seasonal events driven by environmental conditions, the beids that bloom early, lilac phenology is totally or temperature.
“Therefore, they are much more sensitive to any temperature change rate,” he said. “What chickens lilacs are a good cold winter that gradually overlaps the jump.”
Early Bloomers, such as Lilas Jacintas (Syringa X Hyacinthiflora) – hybrids between the common lilac (S. vulgaris) and the Asian Oblate S., which bloom approximately 10 days before the vulgaris are careful.
This explains why a couple of greenhouses is more recent, Mrs. Finley noticed that some lilac flowers opened at Christmas, which means that any flowers spent on those plants would not bloom again in the lilac season. A posterior flow cultivar could take a better option for its points in the collection, imagine “plants that are better in tune with our climate or our anticipated climate,” he said.
A diversity of scale and color
The collection woke up this year in mid -April with Hyacintiflora hybrids such as Vesper Song and Excel; At the end of the months, the common lilas were underway. The Bloom sequence will continue until mid -May, Mrs. Finley predicts, since the Asian species and their selections take care, such as the cut -off lilac (Syringa X Laciniata) and El Palibín S. Meyeri in the form of a mound -shaped mound.
Depending on what taxonomic reference to which it adheres, the genus Syringa includes 12 species or ashes as approximately 20. The majority are from Asia, but two are from southeast Europe, including the common Lilac, s. vulgaris, of the majority of the largest of the main or most of the main or most of the majority or the majority of most of the majority of most or the majority of most or most of the majority of the majority most or 1,600 more. Genetics. (Note on the margin: what are called “French lilacs” are not native to France, but they are vulgaris of double flora originally raised in nurseries there).
Two Asian species, Syringa Reticulata and S. Pekinensis, are trees forms; The rest are of shrub stature, in varied sizes.
Without considering one of those types of true trees, the scale range remains quite different, but for many gardens, the bushes that reach 15 feet or more may not be the best option. Compact cultivars, Mrs. Finley recommends that Bears Palibin include Miss Kim, Prairie Petite and Little Lady.
The official of the International Society of La Lila recognizes seven flowers of flowers, but is more nuanced than in real life, Finley said.
“Is it early in the life of the flower, or is it about to end? It will look totally different,” he explained, and added that the pH of the soil is another variable that affects the color. The slightly acidic conditions of the Botanical Garden promote “really beautiful blues, which not everyone can obtain,” he added. A favorite widely admired among them: President Lincoln.
Would it be a pink cultivar (Maiden’s blush, for example) in his scene in his garden at the lilac era, or perhaps one in the yellow more paid like Primrose or the vivid Congo-Purple-Purple?
Deadheading and pruning
The lilas, which flourish in the growth of the previous season, begins the process of establishing outbreaks quite fast after flowering, so Mrs. Finley recommends that the pruning and light of the light of that spring occur in approximately two weeks after the flowers fader.
The Deadheading process is simple: it simply reduces the following pair of leaves, he said.
Is there no time to do it? Don’t worry. I thought it is “horticulturally shocking,” he said, which means that his plants will look better, it is not essential to the health of plants. An incentive, he thought: it can be rewarded with a better flowering next year, since plants gained waste energy in seed production. (Another potential motivation: prune before, the maximum flowering of duration and its remuneration will be in the form of bouquets).
A spring pruning step not to omit: identify and eliminate branches that rub against each bear, along with the dead or damaged, or those affected by pests, he said, like anyone with holes near the base created by Lilac Born.
Plants that require important pruning to carry bushes too high at the scale and vigor must now be taken into account, but work saved by the end of winter, when a rejuvenation of several years can begin. After eight or 10 years, said Mrs. Finley, Lilac’s stems are simply not as productive. Some of the oldest and highest, perhaps a quarter of them, or as much as a third if they feel daring, every winter finals can be cut to the ground for three years to renew the plant, with the eye to create a good open shape.
As much as I want it to be so, a lilac cannot be cut on a scale returning its branches in half.
“When you make that great heading cut, it will create this proliferation of twigs that simply grow in all directions,” said Finley. “He won what you wanted to do, which was the shortest keel.” The density of new outbreaks can also contribute to additional disease problems, such as dusty mold.
Even with the shame of the wealth of the Syringa before her, Mrs. Finley can point out some outstanding, including Lila’s Sunday, an introduction of 1997 by Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. It does not produce groups of flowers only in the tips of its branches in typical lilac style; Rather, they form throughout the voice, creating the illusion of an inflorescence that can measure about two feet long.
“So it’s a great branch basically or this child or Rosa Magenta,” said Finley. “They are very, very beautiful.”
Another growing that always makes people speak: the bicolor sensation, whose unique flowers are purple, bordered in white.
A cultivar Mrs. Finley still hopes to add to the collection, Rochester, is distinctive in another way. It has what they are called radial double flowers, with as many as amazing 25 lobes, or petals, in each little one it floats inside the largest flowers.
“We certainly want to show the breadth of the possibility of what a lilac is,” he said, “challenge people and say:” This is also a lilac, look how unusual it is compared to what is in your garden. “
Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and the podcast A road to the gardenand a book of the same name.
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