Magnolias--the monarchs of spring

04/24/2006
Magnolias--the monarchs of spring

All winter long, the fat, pointed buds of magnolias, snug within their soft, gray-green velvet sepal coats, wait silently for spring. These are buds so swollen with promise, so elegant in their dormancy, that one thrills to imagine the moment of theiir opening. What huge and splendid flower could such a bud contain?



Then, in March or April, depending on where you are watching your magnolias, the moment of denouement arrives. At the first sign of warmth, the splendid velvet casing splits, cracks, and then falls away like the dry chrysalis of the reslendent butterfly within. Opulent, silky petal wings are revealed, at first tightly furled and then opening under the spring sun's warmth. Creamy, white, blushed, or flagrantly pink. Touched with mauve shading into violet. Royal tulip-like candelabras or swirl of silky skirts in naughty disarray.



After the austerity of winter, there's nothing quite so sensuous as the blossoming of magnolias. With blossoms so big and fragrant that the impression is of a tree full of lilies, magnolias declare the arrival of spring like no other flower.





Alas, the arrival of spring is often a come-and-go affair. The flush of warmth that brought the magnolias into bloom is often followed by a spell of winter savagery: temperatues drop suddenly, and the glorious blossoms of Magnolia x soulangeana are reduced from stately pink goblets to sad brown mops--overnight. If you live in USDA Zones 5b and northward, you may suffer this sequence 4 years out of 5. While saucer magnolias are perfectly hardy to Zone 5a or even farther north, benefitting from their blossoms becomes a hit and miss affair the farther north one goes. The very glory of these trees--that they are one of the first to flower--can also spell demise for the flower spectacle. Just as the first warm spell will bring them into bloom, the inevitable return of freezing temperatures quickly turns those sumptuous petals into mush.



The best strategy if you want to grow saucer magnolia in the north is to choose a late-flowering cultivar, such as 'Verbanica,' with blossoms that are clear rose pink on the outside, with white interiors. 'Lennei' blooms just before 'Verbanica', with huge purple blossoms. The second line of defense is to plant the tree in as sheltered a location as possible, such as near the wall of your house.



Of course, saucer magnolias are not the only temptresses of the tribe. The Loebner hybrids include some excellent selections. These hybrids of M. kobus and M. stellata are taller at maturity than saucer magnolias. 'Merrill' (or 'Dr. Merrill') blooms with a profusion of white petals surrounding pink stamens (photo right).
'Leonard Messel' is an excellent cultivar with clear rosy pink blossoms (photo below)with no shade of mauve at all.



Star magnolias (M. stellata) are shrubby small trees covered in a profusion of fragrant, usually white blossoms in early spring. 'Rosea' has pale pink blossoms, while 'Waterlily' is pink in bud, but opens white. Star magnolia is modest enough in proportion to be included at the back of a mixed border (photo below).








While the above are the most widely available spring-blooming magnolias, several more exotic species are worth growing, especially if you live in Zones 6b-9. The Yulan magnolia (M. denudata) has fragrant, ivory flowers in mid-spring, at about the same time as the saucer magnolia, and makes a magnificent specimen. Magnolia liliiflora blooms quite late and is quite hardy, making it worth seeking out if you garden in a region prone to late frosts. 'Nigra' has deep purple flowers and blooms a full 2 weeks after most saucer types. The lily magnolia is shrubby in stature--more similar to star magnolia than saucer magnolia.

Magnolia campbellii is at once the most majestic and the least hardy of the magnolias, useful to Zone 9a and the maritime parts of Zone 8 in the Pacific Northwest. It becomes a very large tree, with clear rose pink blossoms held vertically at the tips of the twigs. These flowers, already impressive in bud, open to a full 10 inches in diameter, revealing pale pink interiors. This is the blossom in close-up in the first photo embedded in the text above. The only drawback is that you're better off inheriting the Campbell magnolia than planting it, as trees often don't flower until reaching 25 years of age.



The rich native flora of the Southeastern U.S. includes several spectacular magnolias, some of which are quite hardy. The best-known of these, of course, is the southern magnolia or bull bay (M. grandiflora), with its huge, glossy evergreen leaves and enormous, waxy white flowers, sweetly fragrant and borne intermittently from late spring throughout summer. Southern magnolia becomes a magnificent tree at maturity, reaching over 60 feet in height, with a naturally regular, narrowly oval silhouette. Hardy only in Zones 7a-9a, obdurate lovers of this plant living farther north can experiment with the cultivar 'Bracken's Brown Beauty' in extremely sheltered locations.

Less known is the cucumbertree magnolia (M. acuminata), native from east-central U.S. as far north as Ontario! Sometimes semi-evergreen, it blooms with modest yellowish blossoms that make up in fragrance what they lack in splendor. They have an intense lemon perfume. Some strains of this tree are semi-evergreen in protected locations. Cucumbertree has the distinction of being the hardiest magnolia, useful as far north as Zone 4b.

Bigleaf magnolia (M. macrophylla) is a wonderful southeast native for fans of tropicalismo. With leaves up to 30 inches long, and blossoms a foot across, it adds obvious drama to your landscape. The flowers are creamy white, with thick fragrant petals bearing a blotch of maroon at the center. Although it is hardy to Zone 5b, this tree must be planted in a location sheltered from prevailing winds; otherwise its dramatic but paper-thin leaves will be reduced to tatters.

While their dramatic flowers are the magnolias' main attraction, to me it is their four-season elegance that makes them real landscape aristocrats. Most have smooth silvery bark, and all have the aforementioned beautiful winter flowerbuds which are ornamental all winter long. In late summer, many of them bear cone-like fruit structures which often split open to show scarlet-orange fruits. They have naturally beautiful structure, which only becomes more distinguished with age and requires no pruning.

Magnolias in general have no disease or insect problems. However, they are soft-wooded and prone to wind and ice damage and breakage. Take care to remove heavy snow loads from your magnolias.

As they cast dense shade, magnolias are best underplanted with groundcover rather than grass. My favorite groundcover companion is Anemone sylvestris, a gently spreading plant with finely divided foliage and spangles of white flowers at the same time as the magnolias.

Magnolias need well-drained but moist, slightly acid soil to thrive. They flower best in full sun but tolerate about 30% shade.



Magnolias are the ideal specimen tree, and always look most dramatic in flower if they are viewed against a dark background of evergreens (which can incidentally also help to protect them from damaging winds). But if space permits, why not plant an "orchard" of magnolias? A large group of these royal trees, planted in a meadow, will become your spring rendez-vous of choice, where you can wander among the confetti of blossoms on the grass, or look upward at the spring sky tangled in the clouds of creamy blossoms. Either way, you will become intoxicated with the splendor of spring.

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