After the yellows and whites of the flowers around St
Leonard’s in March and April, May brings out two shrubs noted for the display
of purple flowers. The colours of lilac
and wisteria are abundant this month – bringing delight to passers-by, and to
the bees starting to seek nectar in these warmer months.
Neither plant is native to this country, but they were
introduced at different times. The lilac
came first, with records of it being grown in Britain in the reign of the first
Queen Elizabeth. It wasn’t widely known
– Shakespeare doesn’t mention it, despite the bard’s extensive knowledge of
plants and flowers. It is related to the
olive, and the similarity is evident if you compare the wood of the two trees. Like the olive, the lilac is native to the
eastern Mediterranean, and it was travellers to modern-day Turkey who brought
the first plants to western Europe.
(Just imagine the challenge of bringing a plant back from there by
sailing ship, horse-drawn vehicle and horseback!). There are lilacs all over the neighbourhood,
in numerous shades from white through to very deep purple, many derived from
the breeding programme of an energetic French nurseryman of the 19th
century. White lilacs – in Victorian
flower language – symbolise innocence.
Brides from just after the second world war found white lilac a
convenient and inexpensive flower for their bouquets at a time when the flower
trade was recovering.
Lilac’s botanical name is Syringa, and that name comes from
Greek mythology. There was a beautiful
nymph named Syringa. Pan, the god of the
forests and fields, was taken by her beauty and chased Syringa through the
forest. She was so frightened by Pan's
affections, that Syringa escaped by turning herself into an aromatic bush. Pan couldn’t find her, but found the hollow
stems of the bush suitable for making himself pan-pipes.
Lilac flowers can be used in cookery, to make jellies and
syrups, or even dipped in batter and deep fried. They will have fewer calories than a
deep-fried chocolate bar, but I haven’t encountered a fast-food outlet selling
them.
Wisterias came to our gardens in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Most writers say
that the plant was named after a German botanist, Caspar Wistar, despite the
difference in spelling. A minority of
books call the plant wistaria in consequence.
The first wisterias came from North America, and then the great plant
hunters of the nineteenth century collected examples of the same family from Japan
and China. So the plants that we see
around us come from both hemispheres, though the oriental shrubs are more
common. Over the last two centuries of
cultivation, we have come to welcome the shrub as a beautiful climber for
arches, balconies, or to run along walls and fences. The wisteria tunnel in Pinces Gardens, in St
Thomas, has been a feature for nearly 150 years. Unlike the plants in Flanders and Swann’s
song, Misalliance, wisterias may twine clockwise or anticlockwise. The plant can get so heavy that it damages
its supporting structure – and if it climbs a tree, can strangle that!
Although a wisteria comes from the family of beans, and the
plant produces pods, it is not advisable to try to eat any part of the
plant. So enjoy the sight of these
splendid shrubs, and allow the bees their harvest from the flowers.
Published in the Neighbourhood News, May-June 2017
Keywords: St Leonards, Exeter, history, geography, beauty, nature, flowers