Lilac or Syringa

Most lilacs are not very graceful; they get tall and leggy, and their leaves re a magnet for mildew in late summer. But their fragrant flowers redeem them, and they will always be a favorite with gardeners. The common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) is the one most often grown. It has spawned hybrids by the hundreds in shades of lavender, purple, rose and white. It is very hardy and seen it grow as tall as 20 feet.

 

The adventurous can experiment with other lilac species and their hybrids, for different flower shapes and growing habits and to stretch out lilac time to as much as six week. The early Korean lilac (S. oblate dilatata) is fairly tall and has large, fragrant lilac pink flowers. Cut leaf lilac (S. laciniata) is a short shrub with pale lilac flowers and finely cut leaves. Little leaf lilac (S. microphylla) is also short but very wide; the variety “Superba” has deep pink flowers. Persian lilac (S. x persica) is also very wide and spreading the pale lilac flowers is small but very profuse Meyer lilac (S. meyeri) is short with deep purple flowers.

For late bloom, try late lilac (S. villosa), which has long lilac or pinkish flowers, and Japanese tree lilac (S. reticulate, also called S. amurenesis japonica) which can grow as tall as 30 feet and bears long white flowers in mid June. Most of these are hardy and early Korean lilac is also hardy.

Lilac likes a light, fertile well drained soil with a neutral pH. If you’re acid you might dig in some lime, bone meal and wood ashes. Lilacs are easy to transplant but should not be dug while the new leaves are emerging. The powdery mildew they get is unattractive but generally harmless; scale infestations should be controlled with dormant oil. The loss of branches can sometimes indicate borers in the lower stems look for little holes with sawdust beneath them and cut the stems and burn them.

Prune lilacs only after they have become well established. Remove the oldest stems and let a few new suckers grow up to take their place, but don’t leave too many suckers that can rob the plants energy and reduce the number of flowers. Carefully pinching off spent flowers just to the first leaves can result in more blooms the following year. Old plant can be cut as far back as 4 inches from the ground and still come back as bushy, rejuvenated plants, but this is best done over a period of three years. Cutting back a third of the old stems each time Severe a pruning can be done in early spring before buds swell, lighter pruning just after bloom.

Bromeliad: The Most Exotic Houseplant

These fascinating plants are among the most exotic houseplants a gardener can grow and also among the easiest. Not a genus in themselves, but a large group of  genera they include Aechmea, Billbergia, Cryptanthus, Dyckia, Guzmania, Neoregelia, Nidularium, Tillandsia and a number of others. Bromeliads come from the jungles of South America. Some are terrestrial, but many are air plants (epiphytes) living high up in the trees without any soil and taking nourishment only from whatever organic matter washes their way. They are not parasitic and do not draw nourishment from the trees themselves. Tree growing bromeliads catch rainwater in cuplike urns of leaves.

Bromeliads are grown mainly for their spectacular flowers, but the leaves are often particularly handsome too. A typical bromeliad has a rosette of leaves, sometimes soft and green, sometimes stiff and spiky with variegated markings.  A flower stalk usually emerges from the center of the rosette. The showiness of these flowers really lies in the brilliantly colored bracts that surround them, though the tinier flowers are also beautiful. A plant blooms only once, but the flower is often extraordinarily long lasting, and bromeliad plants readily produce offshoots. You may remove these from the mother plant and report them or cut out the spent mother plant and let the cluster of new ones bloom together.

If you are looking for a bromeliad to start with try Aechmea fasciata. You might find itmarketed under various names such as “urn plant” or “silver vase”, but you will recognize it by its vase of stiff, tooth-edged green leaves, marked horizontally with silver bands. The flower spike has toothed bracts of a bright pink color; little blue-purple flowers nestle among pink spikes.

Best of all, this colorful spectacle lasts about six months. The plant grows 1 to 2 feet tall. Another gorgeous long blooming bromeliad is Guzmania  lingulata, which is about the same size, with long green, strap like leaves sometimes striped with purple and a red-orange cluster of bracts enclosing white flowers from late winter or summer. Bromeliads with stiff, variegated leaves like good, bright light and often will take some direct sun but don’t expose them to strong midday sun in summer those with softer, green leaves are fairly shade tolerant.

They do well under artificial lights. They are happiest in warm rooms 65-75 degrees at night even lower from Aechmea fasciata. Give them humid air and a very light, porous organic soil or soilless mix remembers that May bromeliads are air plants and their roots don’t normally grow in soil. Some gardeners grow the ephiphytic types on pieces of tree branch wrapped in moistened sphagnum moss, but a shallow clay pot will do fine.

You can allow the top inch or so of the pot to dry out between watering (overwatering can lead to fungus diseases), but always keep the cup inside the leaves filled with water. Feed lightly a balanced liquid fertilizer at half the suggested strength added to the soil and cup once a month in spring and summer is about right. Propagate by dividing offsets with a knife and repotting them.