Syringa vulgaris 'Alba'

Name: Syringa vulgaris Alba — Lilas blanc : parfum intense, floraison printanière
Brand: Syringa
SKU: pda632-2
Price: 12.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

€12,00

Organic

Sustainable

Locally grown

Syringa vulgaris 'Alba' is a highly fragrant lilac with panicles of magnificent white flowers.

The leaves are simple, broad, light green to glaucous, oval to cordate. They are usually arranged in opposite pairs.

The flowers have a tubular base with an open four-lobed apex, here these are white. They are arranged in dense, terminal panicles. The scent is intense — sweet and heady, one of the most recognisable fragrances in the garden calendar.

The fruit is a dry, smooth, brown capsule.

Depending on how you prune it, Syringa can be grown as a large shrub or a small tree.

The species is naturalized in parts of Europe, Asia and North America.

Flowering	April, May
Flower Color	White
Frost Tolerance	-15°C
Size	2.5m H x 2m L
Soil	Clay, Loam, Clay-Loam, Well Draining
Origin	Balkan Peninsula

pda632-2

€12,00

In stock

🪴9x9 cm

🚂 Ships across EU
🌱 Grown in our nursery

🧑‍🍳 The flowers of common lilac are edible and used for flavoring honeys, sugars, food and other sweets

✂️ Prune in June after the flowers have finished blooming

Ecology

Native to the Balkan Peninsula, Syringa vulgaris grows wild on rocky hills in Serbia, North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It thrives in well-drained, fertile, humus-rich, alkaline to neutral soils, and flowers best in full sun, though it tolerates light shade.

It does best in cold winter climates, requiring a long period of winter chill for its buds to mature — late frost can sometimes kill the buds, so a sheltered, protected position is ideal. Hardy, robust, and long-lived, it is highly tolerant of urban pollution and adapts well to both dry and moist conditions.

The flowers attract butterflies, hummingbirds and long-tongued bees, making it a valuable pollinator plant in late spring. Several moth caterpillars also feed on its foliage.

Floral Morphology

Syringa vulgaris is a large deciduous shrub or multi-stemmed small tree reaching 6–7 metres. Leaves are simple, 4–12 cm long, light green to glaucous, oval to heart-shaped with pinnate venation.

In 'Alba', the flowers are pure white rather than the typical lilac-mauve of the species. The inflorescence is a conical panicle of cymes, usually borne in pairs at stem terminals, up to 20 cm long. Each individual flower has a tubular corolla with four spreading lobes, a short calyx with four teeth, a single style, and two stamens.

The fruit is a dry, smooth brown capsule 1–2 cm long, splitting in two to release paired winged seeds

Lilacs—both S. vulgaris and S. × persica the finer, smaller "Persian lilac", now considered a natural hybrid—were introduced into northern European gardens at the end of the 16th century, from Ottoman gardens.

The Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, is generally credited with supplying lilac cuttings to the Dutch horticulturist Carolus Clusius about 1562.

Well-connected botanists, such as the great herbalist John Gerard, soon had the rarity in their gardens: Gerard noted that he had lilacs growing "in very great plenty" in 1597. However, lilacs were never mentioned by Shakespeare and the 19th-century botanist John Loudon was of the opinion that the Persian lilac was introduced into English gardens by John Tradescant the Elder in the 17th century (we have written about him before- he brought the Tradescantia cuttings back with him from his travels to the American colonies).

It might actually have been the Italian naturalist Pietro Andrea Mattioli who providede Tradescant the Elder with his first lilac cuttings.

All this to say - that Mattioli cuttings was white.

As are these ones .

Now for the proper myths....

The genus name Syringa comes from the Greek syrinx, meaning tube or pipe — a reference to the pith-filled, easily hollowed stems. In Greek mythology, Syrinx was a nymph transformed into a hollow reed to escape the pursuit of Pan, who then fashioned her into his famous pipes.

The white form carries particular elegance in that tradition: cooler, more restrained, as if the scent needed no colour to announce itself.

In the language of flowers, white lilac signifies youthful innocence and first love — it was a traditional bridal flower in 19th-century France, woven into bouquets alongside orange blossom.