e | |
|Danube | |
|especially on | |
|the chalky | |
|precipices of | |
|the Cverna | |
|Valley and on | |
|Mount Domoglet. | |
|It is not found | |
|truly indigenous| |
|further west | |
|than these | |
|localities, and | |
|it is not, as | |
|has been stated,| |
|a native of | |
|Italy, although,| |
|no doubt it has | |
|become | |
|neutralised | |
|there and | |
|elsewhere | |
-------------------+----------------+----------+---------------------------

The common Lilac has been the glory of English gardens since the days of
Gerard and Parkinson of the sixteenth century. From the time that
Parkinson grew it in a pot, with no doubt as much care and anxiety as is
bestowed nowadays on a hundred-guinea Orchid, the Lilac has, on account
of its extreme hardiness and easy culture, become almost naturalised in
these islands, as now we see it in copse and hedgerow, besides gardens
large and small, and even in the town forecourt. To every place where
the Englishman goes to make a home he likes to have about him Lilacs and
Roses. As in the case of several other beautiful shrubs, the improvement
of the Lilac by the raising of new varieties is of comparatively recent
date. Gerard and Parkinson write of the blue Pipe and the white Pipe
(the Lilac being then called the Pipe tree, on account of pipes being
made from its wood), besides the ordinary lilac-coloured sort, and
Loudon, writing fifty years ago, only enumerates the blue (caerulea),
violet (violacea), the white (alba), and alba major, and one double
called alba plena, seven in all. He just mentions, however, a fine
variety, Caroli (or Charles X., as we know it), which about that time
had been raised in France. This still is one of the choicest sorts, and
particularly valuable for forcing into early bloom in winter. Since