By the Rube's count, one of every two people who walk by lilacs will say, "I LOVE the smell of Lilacs!", and the other one will say, "me, too!"

The Rube had mentally organized the BBG's collection into six colors (four shown among these pix), with an appendix of unusually big and old (Fig. 4). But their lilac page says they have "20 of the 27 known lilac species and subspecies, and 130 cultivars ... in single and double forms." It makes him want to go back there and, with much of the same appeal of bird or butterfly-watching, see if he can spot all twenty and be able to tell the difference between them.

At the far left of Fig. Mc you can see that beds of blue grape hyancinths have been planted at the bottom of the lilacs -- our subject for tomorrow.