Sweetbay magnolia

I have fragrant roses in my garden, but I can never detect their scent unless I put my nose right down into a bloom. The difficulty isn't an insensitive sense of smell. It is, rather, that I have a sweetbay magnolia in bloom at the same time. The fragrance of the magnolia is so potent that it overwhelms the scent of the roses.

Sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) blooms over about six weeks from May into early July. Its flowers are small and never make a big visual impact. They bloom a few at a time, each flower lasting only a few days. Their fragrance is huge. To my nose their scent is rose-like, but much more intense.

There is a very handsome sweetbay magnolia in front of 500 Stelle Avenue.

The flowers are followed by shiny, bright red, clustered fruits(1) that ripen in August and September. The fruit is a favorite food of catbirds and mockingbirds. The photograph below shows unripe fruits on July 1.

Sweetbay magnolias are closely enough related to southern magnolias to have been hybridized with them. Unlike southern magnolias, sweetbays are mostly deciduous in this climate. Sweetbay flowers are much smaller and much more fragrant than southern magnolia flowers. Sweetbay leaves are duller and have a silvery gray underside that displays itself very attractively in a breeze.

Another feature that helps with identification is the rather smooth, light gray bark.

Sweetbays grow into large trees in the southern United States. In New Jersey a height of 25 to 30 feet is typical.

I have grown one of the hybrids of sweetbay and southern magnolias, 'Timeless Beauty'. The flowers of the hybrid resembled southern magnolia flowers. The foliage was less attractive than that of either southern or sweetbay magnolia. Worse, the hybrid's foliage suffered winter burn in winters that left pure southern magnolias unscathed. All in all, a disappointing plant.

Sweetbay magnolias are underutilized. Any garden can benefit from having their fragrance for six weeks in late spring and early summer. Very adaptable plants, they are tolerant of both wet soil and shade. A peculiarity of sweetbay magnolias is that they make a dense network of roots just beneath the soil surface. Mulch your beds heavily and the roots will grow right into the mulch. When the mulch dwindles with time, you are left with "aerial" roots. A drawback to this beautiful New Jersey native is that deer eat the leaves and stems.

Sweetbays were the first magnolias imported into Europe from the Americas. The genus was named by Linnaeus after Pierre Magnol, pioneering botanist and physician to the court of Louis XIV.

(1) The fruits are aggregates of follicles.

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Copyright Gregory Palermo

Southern magnolia

Do you have doubts about climate change? New Jersey gardeners don't. As warming winters have threatened to make New Jersey into a southern state, its gardeners have started planting southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) everywhere. In the 1980s, the only southern magnolias I knew of in Plainfield were at the former Memorial Funeral Home on East Seventh Street. Now East Seventh Street has seven southern magnolias within a length of just 300 feet. 1330 East Seventh Street at the corner of Coolidge Street is southern magnolia central.

Many varieties of southern magnolia are cold-hardy in New Jersey. The best known is 'Edith Bogue', named for Miss Edith Bogue of Montclair, NJ, in whose garden it first attracted notice. My experience with 'Edith Bogue' is that it is a rapidly growing, beautiful plant that has stayed green in winters that have browned my Nellie R. Stevens hollies and blackened my aucubas.

Some southern magnolia varieties that can be purchased at area nurseries aren't as cold-hardy. A particularly beautiful and tempting one is 'Little Gem'. It is a small tree with smaller leaves than those of most southern magnolias. Unfortunately, even rather mild winters can cause serious leaf burn. An example at 828 Arlington Avenue is pictured below after the winter of 2006-2007, not a very hard winter.

The tree is in much better condition this winter, which has been very mild so far, but this 'Little Gem' would probably be happier in Virginia.

Some of the varieties of southern magnolia that thrive in New Jersey have leaves with brownish, felt-like undersides.(1) A very handsome example is at 911 Woodland Avenue.

The Woodland Avenue tree shows a feature that is common in southern magnolias, the tendency to grow in a Christmas tree shape. European gardeners often take advantage of that tendency by treating southern magnolias as topiary specimens. Most southern magnolias that I have seen in European gardens have been formally pruned to form perfect cones. An exotic look that is well suited to an exotic plant; in Europe, southern magnolias are imports. I rarely see formally pruned southern magnolias in the United States, where the species is native. That sort of formal pruning is extremely high-maintenance gardening, by the way. It's very different from pruning a yew into a cone. Yews, with tiny leaves, can be shaped with shears. One can't prune southern magnolias with shears because their leaves are too large; the leaf fragments would be grotesque. Each stem must be cut individually with hand clippers.

Southern magnolias are capable of reaching great size in our climate. The grandest southern magnolia I have seen in the vicinity is at 221 East Westfield Avenue in Roselle Park. Twenty-five years ago, before the lower branches were removed, the house behind the tree was essentially invisible.

Magnolias are primitive trees. How primitive? Magnolias evolved more than 50 million years ago, before pollinators like bees and butterflies existed. Beetles are their pollinators.(2) The huge, white, lemon-scented blooms of southern magnolias might be the epitome of romance, but their intended audience is beetles, not you.

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A close relative of southern magnolia, but even more fragrant, is sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana). I have some sweetbay magnolias in my garden, but I would be grateful to hear of any examples of this species that can be seen from the street.

(1) There is apparently some correlation between brown leaf undersides and cold-hardiness (Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, Michael Dirr. Stipes Publishing Company 1998, p. 598). That correlation doesn't work for 'Little Gem', however.

(2) Magnolias, J.M. Gardiner. Globe Pequot Press 1989, p. 14.

Copyright Gregory Palermo