Have you ever heard of "German Lilacs"?

Question

Where I used to live in Montana there were these pretty purple long stemmed flowers growing in a vacant lot next door. They bloomed midsummer every year and they smelled so nice. They weren't really lilacs but an older neighbor lady told me that the old timers called them german lilacs. I sometimes see them here in Minnesota growing wild in abandoned homesites. Does anyone have an idea of what their real name could be? Thanks for any suggestions that you might have.

Whiskey_tears----what?????
Like I said, they are not of the lilac family. The blooms, however, kind of look like a lilac blossom but not on a bush. They grow individually on long stems maybe 2 feet high. I'm just wondering what they really are.....a type of phlox maybe??

Answer 1

I wonder if it might be a type of wildflower called 'elephant head'

I am sure I have also seen them growing up in Alberta, they would grow in ditches & fields and so on.

here are a few examples of Montana wildflowers:

http://montana.plant-life.org/

Answer 2

I have heard of French Lilacs but never German ones. Maybe that is just a local name for ones that are abandoned and growing wild.

Answer 3

Lilac is a color that is a pale shade of violet. It might also be described as light purple. The actual color of the flower of some Lilac plants is a much deeper color, equivalent to the color shown below as deep lilac.

Lilac can also be described as pale magenta.

The deeper shade of lilac is the color usually described as lilac in Europe, as opposed to the paler color lilac shown above.

The source of this color is the German language Wikipedia article on the color violet, where it is described as lilac and is described as being a shade of violet.

so i think the color speaks for its name..