LilacNewsletterVol. VIII, No.1, January, 1982

INTERNATIONAL LILAC SOCIETY

INTERNATIONAL ULAC SOCIETY is a non-profit corporationcomprised of individuals who share a particular interest, appre-ciation and fondness for lilacs. Through exchange of knowledge,experience and facts gained by members it is helping to promote,educate and broaden public understanding and awareness.

Articles printed in this publication are the views and opinions ofthe authorts) and do not necessarily represent those of the editoror the International Lilac Society.

This publication, LILAC NEWSLETTER (for-merly THE PIPELINE) is issued monthly. Backcopies are available by writing to the Inter-national Lilac Society, c/o Mr. Charles Holetich,Royal Botanical Gardens, Box 399, Hamilton,Ontario, Canada. L8N 3H8. Please send 50 centsfor each copy requested.

President: Dr. Owen M. Rogers,University of New Hampshire. Dept. of Plant Science.Nesmith Hall, Durham, N.H. 03824.

Secretary: Walter W. Oakes"Box 315, Rumford, Maine, 04276

Treasurer: Mrs. Marie Chaykowski4041 Winchell Road, Mantua, Ohio, 44255

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Editor: Ms. Mary C. Smith.Rte. 2, Bellevue, Iowa. 52031.

INTERNA TlONAL LILAC SOCIETY,William A. Utley, !Ex. Vice-Pres.,Grape Hill Farm, Devereaux Rd., Clyde, NY 14433.

MEMBERSHIP CLASSIFICA TION

Single annual .Family .Sustaining .Institutional/Commercial .Life .

$ 7.5010.0015.0020.00

150.00

·Mail membership dues to I.L.S. Secretary.

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LILACS AT OTTAWA

Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is the siteof the 1982 I.L.S. Conference. This city,which was chosen as the capital by Queen Victoria,is unique in many ways.

It boasts of having the world's longestskating rink. Not that this will be in operationin May, but the tour will view it in its summerdisguise - as a canal.

Due ,to urban growth the city now has afarm in its midst: the Central ExperimentalFarm of Agriculture Canada. Here are carriedout scientific experiments, trials and test infood, forage and cereal crops. Here, also, isthe Dominion Arboretum and the OrnamentalsGardens with their collections of lilacs.

It was at "The Farm" that, in the 1920's,Miss Isabella Preston carried out the lilacbreeding programme that gave rise to the groupof lilacs that bear her name. Many of theseplants, hybrids of the American group (x hya-cinthiflora) and about 150 French hybrids willbe visited. A tour of the Arboretum will begiven for those who are interested in o~h~iplants as well as lilacs.

Ottawa is a beautiful city, with lots ofgreen spaces. Scenic drives, dotted with lilacs,follow the routes of the Ottawa River from thewest and the Rideau Canal from the South. Theconference tours will be following some ofthese driveways as they visit Rideau Hall, theresidence of the Governor General (the Queen'srepresentative in Canada). Here we will seegreenhouses and the gardens with their plantingsof lilacs.

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Those attending the conference will bestaying at the Chimo Inn. This is a newbuilding with pleasant rooms and all modernfacili ties, including a swi.mm.i.nq pool. Themeetings will take place at this Hotel.

Just across the road (5 minutes walk, butmind the cars) is a very large shopping plaza,open Thursday and Friday night until 9 p.m. withtwo major stores and dozens of small stores andboutiques.

One last point. Ottawa is a safe city.You can walk or jog at night without fear.While muggings do happen, they are rare enoughto cause headlines in the paper.

SEE YOU THERE?

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Solution to "Acrostic for Lilac Enthusiasts"

Lilac Newsletter VII (12) :6-9, Dec. I 1981.

Henry David Thoreau: Walden; or, Life in theWoods: "Still grows the vivacious lilac ageneration after the door and lintel and the sillare gone, unfolding its awe e t-vs cent.ed flowerseach spring, to be plucked by the musingtraveller; planted and tended once by children'shands, in front-yard plots, -- n-ow standing bywall-sides in retired pastures, and giving placeto new-rising forests; -- the last of that stirp,sole survivor of that family."

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LILACS IN HOUSTON, TEXAS

The following letter comes to us from aformer Yankee who m i.s aed the fragrance of lilacsin ner Texas garden so she tried some of thevarieties of S. vulgaris that ILS sent out fortrial. Spring 1981 brought success and bloomsfor Betty Tilton. i

Betty will be glad to share any informationshe can with other warm weather friends sowrite her and find out how she does it.

We should all like to hear anything furtheryou can tell us about your experiment, Betty.

Also, we would like to hear from others whoare taking part in the trial plantings.

Editor

April 6, 1981

Mr. Walter W. OakesP.O. Box 315Rumford, Maine 04276

Dear Mr. Oakes,

WE HAVE DONE IT IN TEXAS .•... I do have a purplelilac bush in fIll bloom .••.• It looks like oneof the old fashioned· purple variety, but in anycase, I couldn't-be more pleased and happy thatit happened this year. .

I know you wanted to know if it can be done.The bush is facing east on the back side of alittle metal storage shed I have. The otherbushes I have are growing quite well. I havetaken lots of pictures of the bush and will send

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you one as soon as I get them back. I intend tocall the papers this morning about it also.

If you would like more information, I willbe glad to write what you would like to know.I have given bushes to my friends and all reportthat the bushes are growing well but no blooms.I am in hopes that I will have flowers on theothers also, if not this year, maybe next.

They are planted in clay soil, but I haveadded sand and lots of lime to it. I also haveput mulch on it in the form of bark type andthat seems to help hold the moisture.

I am just so happy about it and I have goneout every day to enjoy the smell tha-t I haven Ithad in 15 years of being a transplanted Yankee.I will let you know about anything else if itis published, but lilacs can be grown and willbloom in the City of Houston.

Sihcerely,

Mrs. Betty Tilton13719 HometteHouston, Texas 77044

BITS OF WIT

A good laugh is worth a thousand groansin any marke t.

He who thinks by inch and talks by yardshould be moved by foot.

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It is probably safe to assurre that most lilac fansare avid gardeners. Such'real gardeners and fanrers, asEleanor Perenyi calls them in her newbook GREENTHOUGHTS,are familiar with phenology. Whether or not the gardeneris farniliar with the term, pheno.loqy, be rrore than likelyhas noted which of his trees or shrubs can be calledI indicators I, that is, those plants which are sensitiveweather instrurrents.

FollCMingis a reprint of a chapter frrm GREEN'lHOUGH'ISin which the author discusses weather instrurrents anduses the corrrronlilac as a reliable 'indicator'.

Weinvite rre.mbersand readers whohave madecbservationsconcerning plants, especially lilacs, as weather predictorsto share that infonnation with us. Editor

PARTLYCLOUDY

by Eleanor Perenyi

*Reprint

The drought is serious, the corn cropis threatened, lawns are burning up and waterrestrictions forbid us to water them. Turnto the evening weather forecast and there isa grinning young man surrounded with weathermaps and radarscopes to assure us we haven'ta worry in' the world: "The threat of showeractivity has passed and it looks like agorgeous weekend". Or it is winter and asnowfall is in prospect. Panic: "It couldbe as much as four inches and travelers'warnings are out for the metropolitan area andeastern Long Island." Nightly, some variationon these themes is enacted in the grotesqueritual called a weather forecast but more* Eleanor Perenyi is the author of GREENTHOUGHTS:AWRI'IERIN THEGAP..DENI pub.Li.shedby RandanHouse inOctober, and is herein reprinted by permi.sai.on of theAtlantic IvlonthlyCorrpany,Boston, Mass. 02116j CopyrightC 1981.

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accurately described as pandering to infantilism.It is a frightening revelation of how insulatedwe have become from the natural world.

I assume that in those parts of thecountry where sufficient rain is still alife-and-death matter the forecasters showa little more sensitivity, though I wouldn'tbet on it; and surely the states whoseeconomies depend on snow to activate the skiresorts don't allow an imminent storm to beforecast as though it were a plague of locusts.Elsewhere, the weather is treated as somethingbetween a threat and a joke. The "meteorologist"~having read out the figures we can see forourselves on the screen and relayed predictionsthat come to him from computers at the NationalWeather Service as though they were his own,then engages in heavy banter with the fellowwho broadcas ts the news : "Don 't give us anymore of the white stuff, Bill." "1'11 do mybest, Jim." Thus is the power once attributedto Jove and his thunderbolts transferred to aman in a sports Jacket - a quaint conceitindeed in a scientific age, and one withdisturbing implications that the viewer isa child on perpetual holiday, his only interestin going out to play.

But, of course, the chief sin of theforecasters is unreliability. Many years ago,my father believed there would be a revolutionin forecasting as soon as Arctic weatherstations and an efficient system of radiocommunication were established at variouspoints across the globe. A Navy man, he had aparticular interest in the subject, especiallyas it applied to military operations like theNormandy landings - which, it will De recalled,nearly foundered on account of an unforeseenstorm. He died before the invention of weathersatellites and all the recent advances incomputer technology, which would have given him

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even higher hopes. What would have been hisfeelings to learn, thirty years later, thatduring the attempt to rescue our hostages ourmilitary weathermen in the Arabian Sea wereunaware of a vast sandstorm hovering over theIranian plateau - a locality where such stormsare cornmon at that time of year?

Is it reasonable to expect the little chapon the TV screen, who gets his information froma less vitally concerned source, to do better?I would rather trust the farmer who holds hisfinger to the wind - anyone, indeed, who livesoutside the technological cocoon. I canremember that when my father was in charge ofa naval station on a West Indian island in the1920's, he had received no official word ofan approaching hurricane. It was the in-habitants who gave him w a.rn inq vo f the needto take precautions. Reading the motion of thesea, the clouds, feeling in the barometer oftheir bones a sudden drop a thousand miles away,they muttered for days, IIHurricane corning,hurricane corning." They were right. Acouple of hours after the official warningarrived, the storm struck the island like asandblasting machine and nearly blew us offthe map.

Such skills have largely been lost. Hence,in part, the inordinate fear of weather andthe dependence on the idiot box to feed thedream of eternal sunshine or the nightmare ofa couple of inches of snow. In our civil-ization, if that is what it is, only 'farmersand gardeners are free of these fantasies. Wedon't care if your weekend is ruined by therain we need. We curse the wind the Sundaysailor wants for his outing (it dries up ourpeas, just corning to perfection) and bless thesnow that blocks your roads but keeps our plants

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and the winter wheat safe. We must collaboratewith nature whether we like it or not, andperhaps need a special weather service of ourown.

Something of the sort exists, and I don'tmean the old black magic - not that I don'trely on it on occasion, and in the short run.Rain really is imminent when the leaves turntheir backs to the wind, smoke goes to ground,and the earthworms rise to the surface. Itmay not be true that if St. Martin's Day isfair and cold the winter will be short,but I would give it a try. A Mexican-Indiangardener once told me at the beginning of thedry season in October that it would rainheavily for three days in February - I forgotwhich saint's fiesta was involved and anywaythe saint was undoubtedly a thinly disguised-Aztec god - and not thereafter for threemon ths. The prediction was correct, whichamazed me at the time. It doesn't amaze menow. It never pays to underestimate folkwisdom, but neither does it pay to over-estimate it. vlhat I seek is a scientificapproach that takes into account informationgathered down the ages by observant humanbeings and goes on from there.

Such a minor discipline is at hand, .ina development called phenology: the study ofthe growth stages of plants, which can beused to predict the approach of spring and allthat implies about planting dates, theemergence of insects, and other data vital tofarmers and gardeners. The name is modern, thepractice as old as the hills. The Chinese andthe ancient Romans were using phenologicalcalendars a couple of thousand years ago, andreal farmers, as opposed to those engaged inmass agriculture, have always been aware ofthe principle - which simply consists in

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noting the dates when one or more plantsknown as "indicators" burst into leaf orbloom. Given this information, one can thenpredict other events, such as the warming Qf thesoil, the likelihood of one area remainingpersistently colder than another, and so on.It has long been understood that plants aresensitive weather instruments, registeringtemperature and humidity. Indicator plants aresimply more reliable than others. The commonlilac, for instance, won't open its budsuntil it is safe to do so (which is why theflowering can vary by as much as three weeksfrom one season to another), and the farmer orgardener who takes phenology for his guide willwatch for this flowering rather than go by thebooks and perform certain tasks at a fixed date.

In Montana, the blooming of the lilacstells farmers they have ten days to cut thealfalfa and eliminate the first brood ofalfalfa weevils. Truck farmers on Long Islandcount on the flowering forsythia to signal thearrival of the cabbage-root maggot. In NewEngland, we used to plant our corn when the elmleaves were the size of a squirrel's ear,knowing the ground would then be warm enoughfor the seed to germinate. The elms arenearly gone, but oak or maple will do as well.Using the lilac, or the dogwood - anotherindicator plant - it should also be possibleto locate the best place on a property to planta tender fruit tree such as an apricot. Whereeither of these flowered consistently earlierthan others of their kind would be a warmspot, which could save the fruit buds from latefreezes.

A number of countries in Europe maintainnetworks to gather phenological information aspart of their national weather services. Wedon't. Such a network was established here in

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1904 by the Weather Bureau but abandoned fotlack of funds. Now,· however, there seems to bea revival of interest. A few states aredeveloping programs, and the Department ofAgriculture is collaborating with some of them.Phenological maps have been compiled. But itwill be a long time before the nightly fore-cast LncLudes the 1ates t word on lilac time.Meanwhile, there is nothing to stop the amateurfrom making his own observations. I scored aminor success though not with phenology, inlong-range forecasting in the fall of 1979, whenwe had an exceptionally early snowfall, one thattook place while the roses were still in bloomand the leaves green on the trees. That, Iannounced grandly, meant we would have no moresnow until February and an exceptionally drywinter. This forecast was based on nothingmore than notes in my garden log, which recordedtwo similarly premature snowfalls in the early1970s, both followed by dry winters.

It may well have been coincidence, butI turned out to be right. On the number oftimes I have been wrong, misled by the behaviorof squirrels with nuts and the amou~t of mosson the north sides of trees, time-honoredomens, I naturally don't enlarge. But then Inotice that those who predict weather ontelevision rarely mention, or apologize for,their failures either.

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INTERNATIONAL LILAC SOCIETY

EZeventh AnnuaZ MeetingMay 2?~ 28~ 29 - 1982

CHIMO INN - 01T.4WA~ CANADA

I Thuredruj ; May 27th - REG1,;TRATION. Board of Direators Meetings.

r Hospitality Suite open) or aorOBS theI road to sh~.

Friday ~ !.JCClJ 28th - REGISTRATION OPEN UNTIL lO:30 A.M.

Id-l.aetalks followed by tour of City

visiting lilac plantings. Lunoh at CityHall., visit to Rideau Hall~ tour groundsand greenhouses.

Presidents BUffet and Annual Meeting.

Sat~(Jyla.~,'.>Nay 29th - Talks on Ld l.acHybridizers and The'Lilacs

at OttauJa~ then move to the CentralExperimental Farm for LUNCH~ and tour ofthe extensive lilac collections.Awards Banquet~ presentation of Awards~annual lilao auotion.

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Sunday.. Nay soen, VISIT SOME OF OTTAWAS M-ANYATTRACTIONS.

Bring slides Of places., people .•plantsfor a "DO YOU REMEMBER••• " at theHospitality Suite.

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HEADQUARTERS: - CHIMO INN, 1199 Joseph Cyr Street, O't t awa ,

Special Conference Rates $42 per night, single ordouble. Please register direct with the hotel,,

using the enclosed card. Full directions will besupplied.

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BESIDES LILACS - ARE YOU INTERESTED IN

TRAINSPLANESSTAMPSCOINSANIMALSPEOPLEPAINTINGBIRDS .. /MILITARy ;COU~JTRYBOOKSHISTORY

SCIENCE MUSEUMAERONAUTICAL COLLECTION

/PHILATELIC MUSEUMNATIONAL MINT

_____ -NATURAL SCIENCE MUSEUM~iuSEUM OF MANV I SIT . NATIONAL GALLERY~ATURAL SCIENCE MJSEUMHAR MUSEUMGATINEAU PARKNATIONAL ARCHIVESEVERYWHERE

AND TAKE HOME A LASTING MEMORY OF OTTAWA AND ITSSURROUNDINGS,

----------------~/~-~--.--~---.~-

I will be arriving by Car ( ), air ( ), train ( ), bus ( \I •

-(cut here) --------------------- REGISTRATION FORM --------------------------

1.L.S. ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING

MAY 27, 28, 29 - 1982 OTTAWA, CA1!ADA

YES, I plan to attend the meetings. Please se~d travel directions.

NAME (Dr./Mr./Mrs./Miss)ADDRESS

REGISTRATION FEE - $65 (Canadian) per person.I enclose ---_._-- I will pay on arrival -----------------Registration includes all lunches, dinners, tours and transportation.PLEASE MAIL REGISTRATIONS TO: }lrs. Brenda Cole

2700 Priscilla StreetOttawa, Ontario K2B 7E2CANADA