The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-05-31

able museum of trees and shrubs be- longing to Harvard University and di- reeted by Professor Charles Spague Sargent, author of the monumental "Sil- va of North America" During the last few weeks about fifty new varieties of the Syringa family, as it Is technically known in the botony books, have been carefully guarded in the nursery depart ment of the Arboretum, preparatory to their final setting out in the section as- signed to lilacs. Some of these diminu- tive bushes-which have to be watched so tenderly in the first stages of their growth but which are so singularly hardy once they are well up-are very recent acquisitions to this climate introduced hither from China, Japan, Corea, Siberia and other countries of the far east; others represent the latest successes of skilled French and German nurserymen in the production of new and startling hybrids. Additions are constantly being made to this famous collection which has already made possible the beautiful lilac path in the Arboretum, the delight not only of Boston but of all eastern Massa- chusetts.
 The great value of this lilac group at the Arnold Arboretum in the eyes Of students of botony and horticulture con- sists of course not only in its size but in the fact that 1t Is being set out In such a way that the $50 or more species and varieties represented will all be per- manent; that they not In any case revert to a common type. A century hence each shrub now planted will De represented by descendants that have re- tained faithfully every characteristic or result being accomplished simply by avoidance of grafting That is to say, every shrub is raised entirely on It's own stock-a difficult slow and expensive process, put the only one that Is scientifically correct. The point for the layman to note IS that the ordinary commercial horticulturist imports rare cuttings from abroad which he gratis upon the stock of the common lilac-Syrnga vulgaris This is the easi- est sort of process and the lilac bush thus produced is for the immediate pur- poses of the nurseryman, all that can be desired That is to say, the grafted shoots bear wonderfully well for a short time; but presently borer hollows out the original trunk, killing the bush and thereby destroying for good all the rare lilac graft, since the numerous shoots that have sprung up about the parent stem are all found to be ordinary lilac branches quite uninfuenced by the tenn porary graftings.
 Such method of quick but evanescent results is naturally wholly inapplicable to tree museum, such as the Arnold Arboretum really Is. It has, therefore, been adopted as an invariable rule by MT. Jackson Dawson, the famous head gardener at the Jamaica Plains institu- ton, that, even though with some vari- cities 1t takes three or four years to get them fit for planting, every lilac must, as 1t were. stand on its own roots. The cuttings are usually forced in pots dur ing the fall and winter, in some cases under considerable heat. They ordinarily fill the pots before the following spring when they are set out in an open air nursery, there to be watched over and to be removed to the hothouse again with the advent of winter. Most lilac cuttings are rather hard to root but MT. Daw- sons success with them at the Arbore- tum has become proverbial among the horticulturists.
 The finished product, if one may so speak of this lilac industry, appears in the long row of shrubs and trees that borders one of the driveways in the Ar boretum. Here on one side of the path way next to the road you will see the smaller shrubs; on the other side those lilacs for the most part that rise to a height of from 15 to 30 feet and that are more worthy of the name of trees. The size of the specimens in the latter class is indeed to most visitors one of the sur- prising facts about the collection, for there are lilacs In the Arboretum with trunks that are 15 and IS inches through. One of the oldest and most famous Of these was given to the Arboretum nearly thirty years ago by President Clark of the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst. Others are direct importa- tions from China, where, in the noun taius about Picking, the lilacs grow to the bigness of many trees.
 Just at this time of year the lilac path is certainly inferior to no other part of this Arboretum in floral lov1iness, and is especially notable for perfect harmoniz- ing with the surrounding landscape. The shrub and its bloom seem in fact to be particularly appropriate to this climate and people, for the lilac is particularly the flower of the New England spring to such an extent that 1t might properly stand as a candidate to become Yankee dom's floral emblem. The glorious blooms in the Arboretum range, of course, in hue from purest white to hot passionate tints that seem almost, as in Swinburnes line, stained as with wine and made bloody" but the whole mass of them fuses into what Thoreau once called "a tender, civil, cheerful color that is about as warm as the grey-green of the foliage Is cool.
 10 finger among them m tne rare QayS of early June Is such pleasure that one is involuntarily reminded of Longfellows determination, shall I not go in town while the lilacs are in bloom," and of Oliver Wendell Holmes, another great New England poet, who gave us the line When lilacs bloom Summer cries, Spring is here"
 In fact, a thorough-going apotheosis of the lilac-or laylock Walter Savage Landor delighted to spell it in imitation of the seventeenth century poets-is na- tural to this section of the country, for probably nowhere else in the world Is the cult of the lavender and white bloom so cherished. True, we do not anywhere in the United States treat 1t as a hot-house flower after the mode of the Parisians who esteem 1t most highly in the winter months; more often 1t is left to take care of itself, to go struggling over the ground and reproducing itself without let or hin drance, and 1t Is a rapid spreader when left unkempt. Indeed. you will often enough, in distant mountain pastures of New Hampshire or Vermont all over grown with dense clumps of alders and gray birches, come upon a little thicket of struggling lilac bushes, covering per- haps a quarter of an acre of ground, the certain token of farm, cultivated in an earlier generation and now abandoned 10 the fGst-growing hardwood.
 The common 1ilacs with single flowers were among the earliest ornamental