I LOVE my tree - what is it?

Discussion in 'Magnoliaceae' started by mommyshine, May 31, 2007.

  1. mommyshine

    mommyshine Member

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    I am trying to find out what kind of magnolia tree I have. It is the most beautify graceful tree I have ever seen. It is deciduous, gets leaves in late April early may and Flowers in late May. It is 25 to 30 feet tall and has humongous leaves and white flowers. I searched several web sites and can't pin it down. Thanks for any help.
     

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  2. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    Bigleaf magnolia. Nice heavy bloom on yours. Guess it is holding a service for mine, which seems to have died suddenly this past winter.
     
  3. mommyshine

    mommyshine Member

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    That was one of the magnolias I thought it might be, "Magnolia macrophylla'
    Thank you - any advice on how to care for it? Leave it be? It has some lichen or something on some of the branches. It is on a slope right on top of a retaining wall! The wall is bowed slightly - we bought the house two years ago. I think if it were going to knock it over it would have by now. Nothing but rocks and hard earth under it. And it is by a gate too so not easy to figure out what if anything to put around it.

    Do you know how fast these trees grow? I would love to plant one in our naked, sloped front yard. Or can you reccomend another large deciduous Magnolia for an Atlanta home?

    Thanks
     
  4. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    'If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It.' Probably looking at about a 10-15 year wait before an additional bigleaf magnolia seedling starts to amount to anything as a flowering specimen. However, if you think the existing one is vulnerable to a possible deterioration of circumstances in future you may want to get a replacement started. There is also the coastal version, it is not usually a large tree but does bloom when quite small:

    http://images.google.com/images?um=...ls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=ashe magnolia

    (Since Ashe magnolia is sometimes rather large and the leaves of yours may be a bit small relative to its flowers, for a bigleaf magnolia you may want to check how these two are differentiated and make sure yours is, in fact a bigleaf magnolia and not an Ashe magnolia)

    If the bigleaf magnolia is the only deciduous magnolia on the place you may want to plant a spring-blooming kind, that flowers before the leaves to extend the season of interest. Or an evergreen magnolia, getting away from deciduous ones entirely (unless these are just too familiar there). A fairly big range of deciduous magnolias on the market at present, with new selections being made and introduced all the time, it seems. These have the advantage of flowering much sooner than seedlings of (most) wild species. Perhaps for your region you would like to try one of the many new yellow hybrids, achieved by crossing yellow cucumber tree with various other kinds.
     
  5. mommyshine

    mommyshine Member

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    Thanks for the information. There are tons of evergreen magnolias here - almost one in every yard and a lot that look sickly too - maybe from our lack of rain. Thank goodness my big leaf is green and beautiful. I love the flowers on mine but mostly I thinkit is a magnificent shade tree. Very graceful branches. I just measured a low leaf and it when from my finger tips (at the stem) to my armpit. That's a big leaf! A few "friends" have said we should cut it down - that it makes a mess with the leaves in the fall. I wouldn't care if it were messy but it isn't any how. It is so easy to clean up the big leaves - they all fall off in about two weeks or so instead of months - and they don't get missed by a rake. I just swoop them onto a tarp and three trips to the corner of the yard, I'm done. Oak and maple leaves are tons more work to rake up.

    Thanks again.
     

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