Syringa

Syringa (Lilac) is a genus of 12 currently recognized species of flowering woody plants in the olive family (Oleaceae), native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia, and widely and commonly cultivated in temperate areas elsewhere.

The genus is most closely related to Ligustrum (privet), classified with it in Oleaceae tribus Oleeae subtribus Ligustrinae.

Lilacs are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Copper Underwing, Scalloped Oak and Svensson's Copper Underwing and Saras.

Etymology

Via Arabic ليلك lilak from Persian نیلک nilak meaning "bluish".

The genus name Syringa is derived from Greek syrinx, meaning a hollow tube or pipe, and refers to the broad pith in the shoots in some species, easily hollowed out since ancient times to make reed pipes and flutes.

The English common name "lilac" is from the French lilac.

A pale purple colour is generally known as lilac after the characteristic color of the flowers of many kinds of lilac, especially Syringa vulgaris.

Lilacs (Walker)

Lilacs for voice and orchestra (or Lilacs) is a musical composition by George T. Walker, Jr. (born 1922) that was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The work, scored for soprano soloist and orchestra, was the unanimous choice of the Pulitzer prize jury. Walker was the first African-American composer to be awarded the prize.

Walker set the 1865 poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", by poet Walt Whitman. Whitman wrote the poem as an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln after his death on 15 April 1865. The composition was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on February 1, 1996. "The unanimous choice of the Music Jury, this passionate, and very American, musical composition...has a beautiful and evocative lyrical quality using words of Walt Whitman."

Sources

Further reading

Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde

Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (Literature in the Health Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Portuguese language), acronym LILACS, is an on-line bibliographic database in medicine and health sciences, maintained by the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (also known as BIREME, located in São Paulo, Brazil. Similar to MEDLINE, which was developed by the USA National Library of Medicine, it contains bibliographic references to papers that have been published in a set of scientific and medical journals of the region, and that are not covered by MEDLINE.