constellations #43: lilac season
Hi again.
It’s lilac season where I am. Maybe where you are, too. There are lilac bushes in my parents’ yard, which are quite beautiful right now.
In that spirit, here is a short collection of lilac facts:
“Lilacs are part of New England’s horticultural heritage, but like much of the region’s diverse citizenry, are not native to North America,” Arnold Arboretum in Boston tells me. Two species of lilacs are from Europe; the rest are from Asia.
The lilac is the state flower of New Hampshire, adopted as such in 1919 for being “symbolic of that hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State.” (Ok, sure.) State historians say the lilac was first imported from England and planted at the home of the governor of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth, in 1750.
Arnold Arboretum says its collection of lilacs is one of the oldest and largest in North America. It hosts a large, annual lilac festival called Lilac Sunday; in 1941, 43,000 people attended.
My mom grew up in Rochester, New York, the site of a lilac festival that claims to be the “largest free festival of its kind in North America.” (Take that, Lilac Sunday.) It has been running for over 120 years. She tells us about it often.
(So naturally I associate lilacs with my mother, but probably a lot of people do, since they bloom around Mother’s Day.)
The scientific name of the common lilac is Syringa vulgaris. The name comes from a Greek myth about Syringa, the beautiful wood nymph pursued relentlessly by Pan, the god of forests and fields, who was in love with her. To hide from him, she transformed herself into a lilac shrub. A lilac shrub is made up of hollow reeds, and so when Pan saw the shrub, he was inspired to invent the first pan pipe. Syringa is derived from the Greek word for pipe.
The lilac is in the olive family. So is jasmine. I learned that from this extremely sweet TikTok from a plant expert who pronounces “lilac” like my mom does, with the second vowel towards the back of the mouth. (As a kid, I used to question my mom’s pronunciation of “lilac” all the time, which, I think, tells you most of what you need to know about what I was like as a kid.)
Lilac hybridizers have cultivated all sorts of new selections of lilacs over the years, the names of which are recorded by an official (and, in my opinion, rather adorable) body called the International Lilac Society, comprising “nursery staff, educators, professional and amateur gardeners, landscape architects, scientists, staff of arboreta and display gardens, anybody who appreciate lilacs -- and anybody who appreciates them!” Extremely sweet. If you’re interested, it only costs $25 a year to join, and you get copies of their quarterly journal.
The ILS also has yearly conventions, during which convention-goers vote for their favorite lilac. ‘Krasavitsa Moskvy,’ aka “Beauty of Moscow,” has, since 2017, been deemed “ineligible for voting since it always wins the top spot.”
Here’s a short selection of lilac songs: Waxahatchee // Porridge Radio // Half Waif // Jeff and Nina // Nature Shots // Infinity Crush
This week I hope you feel like the ‘Krasavitsa Moskvy’ — simply too beloved, too beautiful, to even be in competition with anyone else.
xo,
M