The four seasons that we experience here in Pennsylvania are a special treat. Being a game warden for 34 years, I had many occasions to spend time in Penn’s Woods during all four seasons. Although in the woods, after a fresh snowfall, I would find myself in a winter wonderland, my favorite time was spent in the spring woods at daybreak. Spring turkey season ranked high as being my favorite hunting season.

Turkey hunters need to be in the spring woods before daybreak. This allows hunters to watch the sun come up and hear the woods come alive as the birds begin their singing, making for a perfect day.

Through the years, I collected old bottles, which is another reason I had for liking the spring woods. While hunting, I often stumbled upon old houses and barn foundations, which were excellent areas to dig for old bottles.

The best time to dig for old bottles is in the spring of the year before the vegetation grows too thick, the sun is too hot and the insects are just plain nasty. Spring is the best time to spot the clues that nature gives you as to where to dig for old bottles. One clue is a lilac bush in bloom that had been planted by a great-grandmother in her front yard.

Nature has reclaimed and hidden most of the signs where a house had once stood, the house is gone, the foundation walls crumpled and the foundation filled with years of vegetation, however the lilac bushes remain. A lilac bush is an old plant that is long lived, blooming long after the housewife that planted it passed away.

Many lilac bushes are large enough to be a tree, and I have often wondered whether it is a bush or a tree. So, I began to check reference books, and I learned that it all depends on the lilac variety.

Lilac bushes are short and compact. Tree lilacs are trickier. The classic definition of a tree is that it is over 13 feet tall and has a single trunk. Tree lilacs can grow up to 25 feet in height and have a tree-like appearance, however their many stems tend to have them classified as bushes.

Digging for old bottles always reminded me of being on a treasure hunt. However, there were no treasure maps to follow but nature does give clues, such as the lilac bush in bloom.

Our word lilac comes from the Arabic word laylack or the Persian word nylac, both meaning blue. This is odd because the color lilac is more purple than blue. Today, a light pale purple color is called lilac after the flowers of this plant.

The botanical name of the lilac is syringa, which comes from the Greek word syrinx, meaning a pipe. The name is from the pithy stems of the lilac bush, which the Turks hollowed out to make pipe stems. Syringa was formerly a name used for the mock orange.

Lilacs are a member of the olive family, which has approximately 30 species. Lilacs are among the most fragrant and beautiful of northern spring-flowering shrubs and small trees. Although there are no Native American species, the lilac is a mainstay of the American garden. The butterfly bush is also known as summer lilacs.

Our common lilac syringa vulgaris comes from southeastern Europe and is widely grown in temperate areas around the world. There are several hundred varieties, with single or double flowers, which come in deep purple, lavender, blue, red, pink, white and pale creamy yellow.

One species introduced to the west from China in the early 1900s is syringa microphylla known as the littleleaf lilac, which produces red-buds. However the flowers are a deep-pink. This plant has an unusual horizontal growth, which eventually makes the bush twice as wide as it is tall, reaching only six feet in height, while most other lilac bushes are upright and vertical, reaching a height of twenty feet.

In some years, there will be a second flowering in the fall. These blooms are sparser than the spring flowers.

Lilac leaves are about five inches long, with flowers that grow in clusters up to ten inches wide. Lilac bushes need very little attention. They can be grown from seeds sown in early spring or by cuttings from green lilac wood, ripe wood or roots.

Lilac flowers can be forced to bloom in the winter by keeping them under glass. The plants are put in pots during the spring and taken outdoors later in the summer. If the plants are kept at a temperature between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, they will bloom in three to five weeks.

Walt Whitman wrote this ode about the lilac on Lincoln’s death.

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d

“In the western sky in the night,

“I mourn’d – and yet shall mourn with

“Every returning spring.”

Well lilacs are about to bloom, the days are getting warmer, the soil is still soft from the spring rains and the digging is easy, and my mind is ready to do some treasure hunting, but my body is not. My mind and my body disagree in many areas of my life lately.

Many of the old bottles that I discovered on these treasures hunts have been the result of a lilac bush in bloom. Some of these bottles I have proudly displayed in our home. My mind has now been telling me that I’m at the time in life when I must give my treasures away.

However I still dream and who knows perhaps in my next dream, the next pull of my potato hook will turn up an old 12-sided Atwood Jaundice bitters bottle that was originally filled by Moses Atwood of Georgetown, Mass.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.