ORIENTAL TREE LILAC

JAPANESE TREE LILAC USED AS AN ORNAMENTAL  STREET TREE..

HUGE, GORGEOUS BLOOMS...

...MILKY WHITE AT MATURITY

Saturday, 8:00 AM.  68 degrees F at the ferry dock, 63 on the back porch.  Wind NNW, light with slightly stronger gusts.  The sky is cloudless with a bit of haze, the humidity a low 65%.  The barometer is heading downward, now at 30.0" of mercury.  The week ahead is forecast to have mixed skies and highs around 70, with chances of thunderstorms on Wednesday.  It looks like pleasant weather. 
   Oriental tree lilacs, Syringa reticulata, in the olive family (Oleaceae), have just started blooming and will enliven the city with their giant, long-lasting plumes of white flowers.  They are hardy here in Bayfield and make a fine ornamental street tree, relatively trouble free and tolerant of a wide range of soil and moisture conditions.  They even have a  slight lilac scent.  There are a number of cultivars of the species reticulata, as well as a closely related species, S. chinensis, also listed as S,redticulata sub species chinensis.  All are nice ornamental trees of rather similar habit, and at this point I could not recommend any one over another. The cultivar 'Ivory Silk' is common in northern nurseries.
  We probably are at the point in Bayfield where we should not put too many more of these "eggs" in our tree basket, as it is never good to over-plant any one genus or species and thus limit the diversity of the urban forest.
   My recorded bloom times for S. reticulata are: 7/12/16; 7/01/15; 7/12/14; 7/15/13; 6/27/12; 7/16/11; 6/22/10. We had a couple of early springs, with this year about average.