Purple French Lilac

by Catherine Sherman

Title

Purple French Lilac

Artist

Catherine Sherman

Medium

Photograph - Photography Digitally Enhanced

Description

"Purple French Lilac" by Catherine Sherman.

One of my favorite flowers is the lilac, which blooms after the first blossoms of Spring have faded and before Summer blooms kick into high gear.

This lilac bloom is a special favorite, because I propagated it from a branch I cut from a lilac bush that I left behind at my previous house. I wanted this beauty with me wherever I lived. It took a few years before it bloomed, and then it seemed to struggle for a while, but now it's really flourishing. Its fragrance is divine.

Now for the lilac's family background: Syringa vulgaris (lilac or common lilac) is a species of flowering plant in the olive family Oleaceae, native to the Balkan Peninsula, where it grows on rocky hills.

Between 1876 and 1927, the French nurseryman Victor Lemoine of Nancy introduced over 153 named cultivars, many of which are considered classics and still in commerce today. Lemoine's "French lilacs" extended the limited color range to include deeper, more saturated hues, and they also introduced double-flowered "sports", with the stamens replaced by extra petals.

On Mackinac Island in Michigan you can see and smell all 23 lilac species, some 400 varieties and thousands of individual plants. In June and even into July in the case of late-blooming varieties. The island celebrates lilacs with a a Lilac Festival in June every year. That's definitely on my list of festivals to experience.

Featured in "Beautiful Flowers" group (05/10/2015); "Visions of Spring" group (05/10/2015); "Philanthropic Artists for a Cause" group (05/11/2015); "Artwork Manipulated Digitally" group (05/26/2015)

Uploaded

May 9th, 2015

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