Jaime Morin is The New York Botanical Garden’s Assistant Curator in horticulture. She works with the plant records and curation teams to help keep the garden’s information on its living collections up to date. She also oversees the details of the garden’s Living Collections Phenology Project.
Magnolia stellata ‘Waterlily’
Late last week I brought a group of new Living Collections Phenology volunteers through the magnolia and oak collections just as the plants began hinting at spring. Of the earliest flowering species, the star magnolias (Magnolia stellata) were beginning to show off their crisp white flowers and the rarer Zen’s magnolia (Magnolia zenii) was in full flower, showing gorgeous pink watercolor streaks at the base of its tepals.
This week the magnolias are really strutting their stuff at The New York Botanical Garden. It is amazing how much things can change over the weekend! By this Monday the many saucer magnolias (Magnolia × soulangeana) in the collection were revealing their newly opened flowers and they continue to get prettier by the day.
Though you can’t go wrong with any of the magnolias here at the Garden, my favorite plant is one of the kobus magnolias (Magnolia kobus). We have a fantastic specimen just north of the Visitor Center that I believe is unparalleled across our 250 acres. This particular plant, accessioned in 1940, is over 35 feet tall and 45 feet wide. Its fragrant white flowers cover its branches like thousands of small white song birds about to take flight.
This morning when I was walking to my office I noticed that the southern magnolia, Bracken’s Brown Beauty (Magnolia grandiflora ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’) was in bloom. My first impulse was the right one—to go up to the voluptuous, velvety petals, shoo the bees and other insects away, and stick my nose into it.
Not all magnolias have fragrances, but many do, and it is always worth investigating. ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’ has a distinctive lemon dishwashing detergent smell to it. It’s not a fragrance that is going to have you traveling from miles away to visit the flower, but it is nonetheless pleasant and worth a sniff or two.
Honestly, the fragrance is just a poor excuse to get close to the magnificent flower. The flower is substantial at 4-6” wide, with petals that are reminiscent of the undulating wings of a dove. Botanically speaking, since the petals and the sepals look so similar in a magnolia, they are classified as tepals. Sepals for the botanically less-inclined are the outer layer of the flower—in trees they are generally green leaf-like structures that protect the flower when it is in bud and then support it when in bloom.
Meteorology is something of an inexact science. Some days, forecasting the weather seems a little closer in discipline to fortune telling. And after all of the comforting reassurance (we were so set on it!) that the cold was behind us and nothing but picturesque spring days lay ahead, the hard freeze set to plow through New York tonight has shoulders slumping in gardens across the region. But, while it’s tempting, skip leading a pitchfork mob to your weatherman’s house. Shooting the messenger never solved any problems, especially when nature is such a fickle character.
The inbound chill may be grim news for many of the early blooms that sprung out of dormancy at the first sign of warm weather. But which petals will pull through, and which are facing the axe? We asked Kristin Schleiter, our acting Director of Outdoor Gardens, to chime in with her take on the situation. Depending on what you’re keeping in your home garden, you may be in the clear.
Magnolias in spring–I’ll keep posting them so long as they’re this appealing. This shot of airy pink saucers under a sky of curly clouds is further giving me amnesia (what winter?)
Magnolia x soulangeana — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
