by Leslie Renjilian
The Mock Orange is a flowering shrub with a bloom that looks like an orange blossom—the genus name is Philadelphus. It's in the hydrangea family (Hydrangeaceae, along with hydrangeas and deutzias and other less common shrubs) and has a lovely white early spring flower with a sweet scent like jasmine or orange blossom.
The common understanding is that the genus name comes from the Greek word philadelphus meaning "loving one’s brother or sister." Alternatively, the New York Botanical Garden suggests that the genus name comes from Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Cleopatra and Mark Antony and a king of the third century B.C. He earned the name Philadelphus by marrying his sister. I'm not sure what he had to do with the shrub, but I consider the NYBG a trustworthy source and this fellow seems like a pretty fascinating character.
Now fast forward 2,000 years and spin your mental globe from Greece to Western New York and you'll arrive at the Mock Orange in the video above. In 1922, Mina Miller Edison (daughter of Chautauqua's co-founder Lewis Miller and wife of inventor Thomas Alva Edison) hired a famous Landscape Architect from NYC, Ellen Biddle Shipman, to design a new garden for Miller Cottage. They planted 40 Mock Orange in the gardens at Miller Cottage at a cost of $200. When the gardens were restored about 100 years later, several of the original Mock Orange were found in the back left corner of the garden. (The Miller family did a really excellent job of caring for the garden through the years.) While most of the original plantings were carefully dug up and tended to by Betsy and her crew offsite during the year-long renovation and then replanted after the garden was finished, the Mock Orange remained in place during the restoration. Check out the photo below of the lone Mock Orange in bloom in June 2019—that is one tough mudder.
However, not all of the Mock Oranges had survived the century, so new ones were added as part of the garden restoration in 2019. The modern cultivars have larger leaves and showier blooms, but they seem to be missing one thing—the scent. The older shrubs give off a strong and heavenly scent when they bloom in early summer, but the new ones have hardly any scent at all.
A recent post by the U.S. Botanic Garden stated that "Scientists have mapped the rose genome and are studying how specific genes affect scent. Researchers are also exploring enzymes that generate geraniol, a component of fragrant rose oil....Hundreds of chemical compounds give roses their fragrance, a scent that differs from rose to rose. Old garden roses have strong floral scents, but most modern hybrid roses have little fragrance. Breeding focused on enhancing color and disease resistance, which inadvertently selected out scent in many varieties."
I am not aware of similar genome studies on the Mock Orange but we have something better—the nose of our own Betsy Burgeson and two data points growing 15 feet apart right here in the garden of our own National Historical Landmark of a cottage (Miller Cottage). If you are here in June, please take a deep sniff of the old mock orange and the new one. You will not believe the difference.
A "straight native" is basically a plant that has not been tampered with by nurserymen or botanists. It's still the way it evolved in nature. There are about 27 Philadelphus native to North America. There are an additional 33 Philadelphus native to Central America, Asia, and southeastern Europe. No one knows how many times those 60+ or so plants have been interbred and "improved" through the ages. In fact, if you research this question, the number of hybrids and cultivars is usually just noted as "countless."
I wish the original Mock Orange in the Shipman Garden were a North American straight native so we could smell that scent here, but it is not. We are lucky enough to have the original nursery orders from 1922 and we know that those Mock Oranges were Philadelphus coronarius, the same species as the newly planted Mock Orange, native to Asia Minor. Botanists have been importing, exporting, breeding and messing around with plants for a very long time to achieve their desired qualities in the offspring. The interesting thing here is that this one species has been "improved" so many times in only the last 100 years that we can easily detect the difference the breeding has had on the scent—it's nearly gone in the newer plants.
Shipman Garden Before and After Photos
with arrow on the original Mock Orange
Same viewpoint 2019 and 2023
The Shipman Garden in June 2019, showing the brand new steps leading into the rear garden from Vincent Ave. The stone outline of the planting bed is clearly visible. The old boarding house foundation, which serves as the rear wall of the garden, and the sloped retaining wall were rebuilt and reset using the same stones in the days following this photo.
The same view of the back corner of the Shipman Garden. Now, in 2023, the walls are still visible but softened by the plantings. The stone path leading to the fountain had been buried under turf for years, but was unearthed and reset in the new lawn, which is naturalized (not treated with chemicals and looks much as it would have in 1922).
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