i say no.. but i never tried it ....

you could have tried it.. faster than posting this.. lol ...

give it a try .. weirder things have happened ...

ken

ps: im going to guess.... its an issue how far formed the bud is in fall .... rather than having to develop in spring [like a huge L bud].... so i would look to the ones that dont bloom in spring.. due to a bad winter.. lol ...

the list sounds like low # petaled flowers.. [i would call them simple flowers.. but that term might mean something else, maybe sexual parts or something].....compared to the clustered flowers like lilac ...

ken

GG has given good advice. You can force lilac but only after flowers buds are visible. Nothing to do with flower structure, just seasonality.

flora confuses me.. lilac buds are set the previous fall ... and are nearly microscopic.. but can be SEEN .... if you look hard enough ...

i dont see how an 18 inch branch cut in winter ... could have the stored energy to make a 6 to 8 inch lilac flower cluster ...

ken

ps: its easier to confuse me in winter .. lol

forsythia can be forced pretty easy, and i take cuttings when you really can't see much of a bud at all. They just develop if you put the cuttings in warm conditions. Very nice to see flowers in early spring before everything else is blooming. this is in zone 4, Wisconsin

Many shrubs set flower buds at the end of the prior season. But that doesn't necessarily make them good candidates for forcing in late winter. It is the timing of the flowering and when the flower buds start swelling. It is most effective with the very early blooming shrubs/trees mentioned or those other early bloomers that tend to produce their flowers before leafing out.

There is a bit of a time limit involved as well - the frequent suggestion is to cut stems for forcing no earlier than about 6 weeks before usual bloom time. And that's probably the outer edge! For common lilacs, that would be about mid to late March at the earliest......more like early spring. And yes, you can force a lilac into bloom but you just want to attempt it much later than you would with the forsythia, etc.

Visible. Ken, not set. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. They have to be fairly well developed.