Lilacs blooming in October !!

Today I saw something I've never seen in my life and frankly didn't know could happen - lilacs blooming in October here in Wisconsin.   The University of Wisconsin's Longenecker Horticultural Gardens here in Madison have an immense collection of lilacs (400 specimens), which draw large crowds of locals each spring.  When I read that they were re-blooming, I headed over this afternoon.  It was stunning to see and smell fragrant blossoms on plants that were already dropping foliage for the autumn season:

According to the gardens' curator, this odd phenomenon is a result of unusual events from this past spring:

Extremely rainy weather in early spring when the common lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) were beginning to flower brought an acute outbreak of blight caused by the bacterium pseudomonas syringae... the bacteria caused the lilacs to defoliate in July and go dormant, as if they were getting ready to survive winter. Then in late summer, with about 18 days of cooler temperatures, they responded as if it was spring...  The arboretum has a weather station, so Stevens said he knows that starting Aug. 6 there was a temperature shift, and Madison went from the high 80s to highs in the mid-70s with 50s at night. 

“We got pretty cool combined with the rain,” he said. “And what happened is the plants responded as if it was spring. So they came out of that dormancy and started throwing flowers.”

Stevens said the flowers will be blooming until there is a killing freeze or even a hard frost, which generally happens in the first two weeks of October. Then the plants will get ready for winter and go dormant.

When I started TYWKIWDBI seventeen years ago, the unofficial motto was "you learn something every day."  That was literally true today.  (actually it's literally true every day, but more so today).

As I walked around this afternoon my eye was caught by a tree that looked ever so much like a Prince Rupert's drop:

I found the tag, which indicated that this is a type of sugar maple.  I presume this is its natural configuation, because our arboretum prunes boxwoods and some other shrubbery, but not maples.  Besides, if they trimmed the top, it might explode...

I'll go back for a foliage photo near the end of this month.