Common Lilac
Syringa vulgaris · Oleaceae · 라일락
How to spot it
Told apart from similar shrubs by heart-shaped opposite leaves and fragrant spring panicles.
Look
- Leaves
- Heart-shaped simple leaves 8 to 15 cm long, dark gray-green to blue-green and hairless.
- Flowers
- Strongly fragrant flowers in lilac, purple, pale violet, white or pink open in spring in terminal panicles up to 20 cm long; the corolla is tubular with four lobes.
- Fruit
- Flattened capsules about 2 cm long cluster in the panicle, ripen from green to brown, and split into two halves holding four seeds.
- Bark
- Pale gray-brown bark with small lenticels and raised leaf scars; new twigs are four-angled and glossy brown.
Where it grows
- Native to
- Native to the Balkan Peninsula.