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tree lilac

	While we're on the subject of lilacs, I have a beautiful
Japanese tree lilac just west of the concrete breezeway of my house.
It's huge and probably fairly old (I just bought the house two years ago
and don't know when any of the trees were planted, but there's a
good-sized hard maple and a huge pin oak along with two big locusts).
Last June it was incredibly beautiful in bloom with billowing white
fragrant plumes for weeks.  This year there was ONE bloom high up and
that was it!
	We are flower gardeners, big time, and have built a lot of beds
and planted a lot of rock garden and alpine plants, border perennials,
shrubs, ferns, climbers, and annuals in the two summers we've been here,
so there's always a sprinkler going somewhere nearby when there hasn't
been a heavy rain--so I doubt if the tree was having water problems.
The leaves look fine--no sign of insect damage, fungus, wilt,
discoloration, etc. The bark seems to be fine too--no exfoliation or
burls or anything like that.
	The only thing that makes me wonder about water, however, is
that it was evidentally planted right up against the concrete paving of
the driveway on one side and the breezeway on the other.  There was a
lot of organic material piled under it when we bought the house--some
paper bags of leaves had broken and decomposed, there were some pieces
of sod piled there, odds and ends of weed material, etc.
	As a result, we assumed there was a circle of soil around the
base of the tree, and, in fact, we planned to do a raised shade bed
there, as we have successfully done before under a white oak in a former
garden and the large maple in this yard.  When we began clearing and
working in the area this spring, we discovered that there was concrete
underneath all this organic material and lots of surface roots from the
lilac.  	After we discovered this situation, we removed the
material and some of the roots and trenched a little--so now water will
definitely run down into where the tree base is rather than running off
onto the pavement.
	It's also true that we had a few days of record cold in the
middle of an otherwise standard-to-mild winter for east central Illinois
(nipped the blooms of every magnolia in town)--and some stretches of
usual heat despite an abnormally cool and pleasant spring.
	So--any of you lilac experts want to venture an opinion?  We
have a plant pathology clinic in the summer at UIUC, so I could bring in
a sample for analysis for a small fee, but it really doesn't look
diseased at all.

Susan Campanini
in east central Illinois
zone 5b, min temp -15F?

Dr. Susan Campanini
Coordinator of Instructional Development
Guided Individual Study
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
302 E. John St., Suite 1406
Phone:  (217)333-1320
E-Mail: campanin@uiuc.edu
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