Magnolia virginiana var. virginiana

There is something quietly instructive about the range of Magnolia virginiana. The species runs from the cold, swampy woods of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where a small population clings to the northern edge of the natural territory, all the way down to the Gulf Coast of Texas, a span of climate and geography that would seem to demand two entirely different plants. In the North the sweetbay obliges by turning deciduous, multi-stemmed, and compact, staying modest in deference to the winters. In the South the same species becomes something else entirely, a tall, evergreen tree of real stature. Botanists eventually gave the northern form a name of its own, var. virginiana, and that is what Woodlanders grows here, raised from seed collected at the Massachusetts limit of the range.

The sweetbay carries a distinction few American trees can claim: the honor of being the first magnolia known to European gardens. In 1688 the missionary and naturalist John Banister sent a plant from Virginia to Henry Compton, the Bishop of London, and the tree took root in cultivation abroad before the genus Magnolia even had a name, which Charles Plumier would coin only later from a species on Martinique. More than three centuries on, the sweetbay remains as much a garden treasure as a botanical footnote.

The flowers arrive in early summer, and then keep arriving, since the sweetbay blooms in succession over several weeks rather than all at once, so the fragrance becomes a sustained presence rather than a single event. The blooms are modest in size, two to three inches across, creamy white, and carry a lemon-cream scent that travels surprisingly far on warm air. The undersides of the leaves are a glaucous, chalky white that catches light differently from the glossy dark green above, so in a breeze the whole canopy seems to shimmer.

The sweetbay also has a long history of use. Native Americans and colonial settlers steeped the aromatic bark to bring down fevers and ease rheumatism, and turned the fruit to coughs and chest complaints, while beavers gnaw the wood so readily that the old names beaver tree and castorwood stuck. In the garden the tree earns a place other magnolias would refuse: tolerant of wet soils, boggy ground, and heavy clay, yet adaptable to ordinary garden conditions once established. In the North the sweetbay stays compact and shrubby; in warmer zones the same tree pushes toward a small multi-stemmed specimen. Either way the fragrance alone makes the case.