Syringa vulgarisL.

common lilac

WFO wfo-0000818704 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. a Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202960904
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. b Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204190680
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Jais Knudsen
fig. c Jais Knudsen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201947769
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. d Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204160140
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak
fig. e Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203202271
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Liam Steele
fig. f Liam Steele, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203230069
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by Milan Keršláger
fig. g Milan Keršláger, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197499005
Syringa vulgaris, photographed by David Sandler
fig. h David Sandler, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196990013

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 4,386 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 4,386 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 67 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Lilac caerulea (Jonst.) Lunell
  • Lilac cordato-folia Gilib.
  • Lilac suaveolens Gilib.
  • Lilac vulgaris (L.) Lam.
  • Lilac vulgaris var. alba (Weston) Jacques & Hérincq
  • Lilac vulgaris var. coerulea (Weston) Jacques & Hérincq
  • Lilac vulgaris var. purpurea (Weston) Jacques & Hérincq
  • Lilac vulgaris var. violacea (Aiton) Jacques & Hérincq
  • Liliacum album (Weston) Renault
  • Liliacum vulgare (L.) Renault
  • Syringa alba (Weston) A.Dietr. ex Dippel
  • Syringa albiflora Opiz
  • Syringa amoena K.Koch
  • Syringa bicolor K.Koch
  • Syringa caerulea Jonst.
  • Syringa carlsruhensis K.Koch
  • Syringa cordifolia Stokes
  • Syringa cordifolia var. alba Stokes
  • Syringa cordifolia var. caerulescens Stokes
  • Syringa cordifolia var. purpurascens Stokes
  • Syringa latifolia Salisb.
  • Syringa lilac Thouin
  • Syringa lilac Garsault
  • Syringa lilac var. alba (Weston) Thouin

and 43 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.