Magnolia grandiflora

Britain’s temperate climate has proved hospitable to species from far different norms as gardeners adapted their sites to offer shelter. By comparison with America or China, Britain has been left a comparative tabula rasa by the succession of encroaching glaciers. Yet the ambition of importers and the skill of gardeners have found the means to accommodate their needs and profit from their spectacular beauty.

Catesby's Laurel tree of Carolina by G.D. Ehret

In the best specimens, the Magnolia grandiflora is a tall tree with a strong rough trunk and shapely branches forming a goblet shape. Flowers and fruit are produced over a long summer flowering period so that the tree may hold both at the same time. The creamy huge blooms whose musky fragrance fills the air around become large seed carriers, brown spikes turning dark and dripping with small red seeds held by a fragile thread to the pods until ripe enough when dropped to catch the moisture and bed in. An evergreen, the magnolia sheds its leaves intermittently and the ground below is strewn with leaves shiny green above and penny brown and felty beneath, that are slow to decay.

Transported to Britain in 1726 by Mark Catesby, the M. grandiflora was eagerly collected by estate owners amassing exotic species for their gardens. In this country its glossy evergreen leaves and delicate blooms need protection. Slow to mature, the largest specimens here are often wedged into a corner of a large house where the warm stone or brick heated by a more fleeting sun brings it to a majestic size.  There are specimens to see usually associated with great houses. One such can be found at Copped Hall near Epping. Gardeners with the space continue to set them out to enhance their walls or in sheltered locations in parks.

The fossil record demonstrates that Magnolia is an ancient genus, from the Mesozoic era, before bees. The large soft flower petals, actually tepals, undifferentiated into sepals and petals, enclose an ovary strong enough to support beetles postulated as the original pollinators. The fruit can be seen as cucumber-like structures – hence some species of magnolia are known as cucumber trees. Over the long existence of these grand trees, dinosaurs may have walked in their shade as well as Southern belles. Gone with the Wind tells of the women who shaded their skins from the intense sun to achieve the same creamy hue as magnolia bloom. For all their fragrance it could be said the blossoms also reek of the Old South and the great injustice of slavery and the rural system.

For an impressive and everlasting adornment to a hall table, try the trick of grand hotels: take off a magnolia branch that needs pruning; cut the side shoots into large arrangement-ready lengths and plunge into a solution of glycerine and water for a couple of months. The glossy green turns a warm and polished chestnut and the sturdy dried leaves cling strongly to the branches ready to be manipulated into a wintertime bouquet as statuesque as the tree itself.

Young Magnolia grandiflora at Copped Hall (P. Pirie)

Sources: Collins Tree Guide 2004