Non-hybrid lilacs, Syringa vulgaris, are quite common - most nurseries sell them in season. However, you will most often find named forms or cultivars, rarely just the straight species. Scent will vary widely from cultivar to cultivar.

Similarly with perennials (lilacs and any other woodies are typically referred to as shrubs or trees). You'll find many non-hybrid perennials, both just species as well as named cultivars. These are also easily found by seed, as well.

There is no reason to consciously avoid hybrids - in many cases, these are superior plants, taking the best of the parents and combining it with hybrid vigor. Nor should one necessarily overlook named cultivars in favor of the species. Named forms are usually selected for enhanced color or fragrance or for increased blooming or any of several specific attributes.

Your source can be any place that sells shrubs and is good about labelling them correctly. Find what you like and write the latin name down as well as the common name and selection name. Go back home and google for the item, to learn if it is hybrid or not. Often but not always, seeing an 'x' in the middle of the name will indicate that it is a hybrid (sometimes that 'x' gets lost in printing or common usage). As Pam says, don't turn down a shrub just because it is hybrid! Many hybrid shrubs are far superior to their individual parents, giving us improved color/form/size/or hardiness. It is more important to choose a shrub suitable for your climate and plant it in the right sun/shade location and making sure it has the appropriate soil and sufficient moisture for its needs.

I'm wondering if you definitely want non-hybrids, or if instead you want heirloom varieties?

My apologies if you already know all of the following, but I thought I'd go through it just in case:

Hybrid versus open-pollinated status isn't nearly as important for many perennials or for things like fruit trees, roses and other shrubs, and the like, because these plants are usually propogated vegetatively anyway. I would guess (others would know better) that most fruit trees, shrubs, garlic, potatoes, and other vegetatively propogated plants are _not_ open-pollinated, even if they're vintage varieties hundreds of years old, because there's really no payoff for that breeding work.

For example, if you have a magnificent apple tree, it would take many generations of apples, at several years per generation, to approach an apple that has those characteristics and comes true from seed. It's much easier and faster to propogate by taking grafts from that first successful tree.

To put it another way, if it's not normally propogated by seed, hybrid versus open-pollinated really doesn't matter. It probably would matter if you're going to do breeding work with the plant and that breeding work makes it desirable for all seeds to be the same, but otherwise it wouldn't generally make a difference.

But open-pollinated vegetables have a lot of other advantages - they're often varieties that are more suited to home gardens rather than big agriculture, they let you do your own propogation, and they just have all that cool history. If this is what you're after, then you may want heirloom, rather than specifically non-hybrid, perennials.

Burnet

Burnet THANK YOU! You are correct, of course! I was really asking for heirloom, not non-hybrids. My mistake.

So, on to my original question, where can I purchase beautiful heirloom lilacs? Will any nursery have them or do I need a specialty on-line nursery for these?

Thanks again,
lilrose

Hmmm. If you'd asked about roses or hydrangeas, I'd point you to Vintage Gardens. For lilacs, I don't personally know of any nurseries that specialize.

However, Forestfarm (www.forestfarm.com) has several pages of lilacs on their website, including plain unnamed syringa vulgaris along with several named versions. Looking up a few of these varieties on Google and adding the search string "introduced", I see that at least one is old enough to count as "vintage" (Miss Ellen WillMott, introduced 1903). There may be lots more, I just stopped when I confirmed that they have at least some older varieties.

I mention Forestfarm because they get really good reviews on Dave's Garden Watchdog and were very impressive the one time I ordered from them. (Quite expensive, but good plants and so well packed that I think you could have played basketball with the boxes and not harmed the plants. All the plants, leaving out the two that were _stolen out of the ground_ (grr) have taken hold well.)

I'm sure there are plenty of other nurseries that may have more lilacs.

Burnet