What kind of tree is this?

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I took down a tree in the back garden last week. I didn't intend to, but mostly it was dead and the trunks/stems just pulled away out of the earth. Some stray green leaves at at the top, but that's all.

However, I suddenly hanker after a replacement to fill the gap as back in the day it was just right. I've seen another one in someone's front garden. But exactly is it?

The photos attached are in different various close-ups!

Looks like a lilac. Did it have flowers over spring and early summer?

According to my app @BlackberryCitron is correct, it's a common lilac :)

Lilac

I think it looks like a lilac, too. But I'm a bit worried at the way it came out of the ground. Was it rotten at the base? It might have a fungal disease. Has anything else died suddenly in that border? If it's honey fungus, there's no point planting another lilac in the same place, the honey fungus would kill it after a couple of years.

Well I always understood that a lilac was in the garden but did not realise that was it, because of late it really had no scent at all and no flower. There's a lilac at at the end of the road but that is more like a tree with a thick trunk and thick branches and scented for a month or so - this doesn't seem to fit that bill!

Much of this one in my garden was covered in ivy - I don't know why Ivy was ever a woman's name, being a parasitic climber, someone was having a laugh.

Thanks for the prompt reply!

We had a lilac in our front garden when we moved here, it always looked rather sickly and hardly flowered, and one day DH leaned against it while gardening and the whole thing fell over! It was completely rotten at the base. I don't think they are particularly long-lived.

Maybe get another, but don't put it in the same place?

Mumsnet's brilliant isn't it? Everyone pitching in to help. It's like the Twilight Bark!

Yes, there was some honey fungus many years ago, I mean decades. Shame if I can't plant a replacement in the same place - is it possible to eradicate the fungus? What if I dug it all up and put some other soil in there? Would that work? There's a hawthorn tree nearby but of course I didn't ask for that - they just spring up like plane trees.

Fungi are notoriously hard to get rid of. It involves removing the entire wide area down to a couple of metres. Not for the faint-hearted!!

Maybe plant something else in that spot, as whatever the fungus was, it may not have a go at another plant species. One thing you can do is add beneficial mycorrhizal fungi to the planting hole - 'Rootgrow' is one sort and is sold in all garden centres.

If you google RHS honey fungus resistant, the RHS do a list of plants that are prone to HF attack, and resistant to attack. Lilac is prone sadly (voice of bitter experience). There are no effective treatments available for amateur gardeners. You could try digging out a planting hole much wider and deeper than usual, use barrier such as landscaping fabric to line the sides, backfill with fresh soil and plant your lilac into that. As advised by an RHS advisor. I decided I couldn't be arsed, and my new shrub would have to take its chances. The fungus spreads through the soil at a depth of about 6 - 9 inches in my garden but I think it can be a bit deeper. It looks like black bootlaces. For years I thought it was dead plant roots.

According to my app @BlackberryCitron is correct, it's a common lilac I think it's probably more accurate to say *BlackberryCitron confirms the app is correct. The app is basically flipping through pictures seeing what looks vaguely similar, but doesn't have the botanical knowledge of a gardener to reject things that are clearly wrong (eg acreeper rather than a bush, not grown in this country etc)

Honey Fungus is among the top 10 most frequent fungi found on British Mycological Society fungus forays. The fact we still have woods in this country lends credence to the theory that it's more of a danger to plants that are in any case nearing the end of their life.

Lilac as others have said

I'm reviving my thread because, there's the thing, I just don't understand lilacs!
I'd like to get one like in the first picture I posted - it's a common lilac, apparently.
But - and this is confirmed on other Mumsnet threads - lilacs seem to be all kinds of things, bushes, trees etc.
What is the technical name for the one in the picture I posted?
Again, here's a tree up my road, seems to be a lilac, and here are the pics. But it's not a tree made up of small shin like trunks, but more like a real tree with a big if twisty trunk. What kind of lilac is that and how do I avoid it? It's not the kind of thing I'm after.

Just a bump to see if anyone can head me up as to the difference between the common lilac in the first picture, and the - presumably - lilac tree in the last picture?

The tree variety is Japanese Lilic. It’s a tree vs shrub. It’s “flowers” are not very showy or scented. It has a nice shape and size and is drought resistant.
French lilac can occasionally be trained into a low tree shape, but it’s known for multiple branches and richly scented showy blooms.
It doesn’t reach the same size ever.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringa_reticulata

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringa

This has made me so nostalgic. Lilacs are unusual in Melbourne, so much so that if I see one, I pull over and have a sniff. I think it's the heat and general dryness they don't like.

Hi, the original lilac I posted has now flowered so, yes, it's a lilac alright! This is the one I want to get to replace the one in my garden that just sort of came away after not flowering for years. I don't know if these are sold at garden centres or whether it's better to go online - Paramount Plants was recommended on M'net one time - but they're not cheap at around £100 a pop and not available at the moment it seems.

This seems indeed to be the lilac vulgaris ie common lilac, going by recent newspaper articles on this flower.

This lovely local garden also had a different kind of lilac - a limone one I think.

Can a new one be planted at any time or is it always best to wait for autumn so the roots will be tougher?

However, down my road there's another lilac tree - it's similar but not really the same, the flower is darker. The plant is more a tree than a shrub. This is what I struggle with a bit - it's also a lilac, not bad but not the one I'd get. What type is this, does anyone know? I don't want to get the wrong one!

Sorry, these pictures seem to upload the right way, but when I post them they're not!