Philadelphus inodorus is native to stream banks and river bluffs of the southern United States. It has little or no fragrance. The variety, grandiflorus, has been called the 'English dogwood' although it is neither.

Linnaeus named the genus for Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the second ruler (282 to 246 BCE) of the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt. The lighthouse at Alexandria was completed during the reign of Philadelphus. He had a shipping canal dug from the Gulf of Suez to the Nile. And a controversial legend claims he was responsible for the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek called the Septuagint for the 72 Jewish scholars who completed the task. (Philadelphus means brother/sister-loving (humanity), but the man was married to his sister, Arsinoe II.)

Prior to Linnaeus, mock-orange were known as Syringa. Gerard's Herbal (1633) explains the name, "The later Physitians call the first Syringa...that is to say, a Pipe, because the stalks and branches thereof, when the pith is taken out, are hollow like a pipe...." Gerard called the mock-orange Syringa alba and the lillach (lilac) Syringa caerulea. (Syringa now refers to lilacs.)

Gerard described his experience with the blooms, "...the flowers, growing in tufts, compact of four small leaves of a white color, and of a pleasant sweet smell; but in my judgement they are too sweet, troubling and molesting the head in a very strange manner. I once gathered the flowers and laid then in my Chamber window, which smelled more strongly after they had lain together a few hours, with such an unacquainted favor, that they awaked me out of my sleep, so that I could not take any rest till I had cast them out of my chamber."