The Lauraceae is an underappreciated family. Its members include cinnamon, camphor, bay laurel, and the avocado, which gives you some sense of the range of things the family has contributed to human civilization. Machilus thunbergii is another member in good standing, though these trees arrive in the Western garden with considerably less fanfare than their relatives. In East Asia they are well known: a coastal evergreen tree native to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Vietnam, valued for timber, planted as a street tree, and the source of makko, a powder derived from the bark and used for centuries to bind incense and, in a more practical application, to repel mosquitoes. The bark also has a history in traditional medicine. Here, in other words, is a tree that has been useful to people for a very long time, which is not a bad thing for a plant to be.
Magnolia virginiana, the sweetbay magnolia, has long been a tree of distinction in the American landscape, ranging from the cool wetlands of Massachusetts to the Gulf Coast. Across that span the species wears two very different guises. In the northern states the sweetbay is a smaller, often shrubby tree that drops its leaves in winter; in the Deep South the species reaches fullest expression as Magnolia virginiana var. australis, the evergreen southern sweetbay, a large and enduring tree of great grace.
This is the uncommon pink-flowered Turk's cap, a soft-toned form of the familiar scarlet Malvaviscus arboreus, a subtropical relative of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae. The flowers carry the same charming quirk as the red kind: two to three inches long, they never open flat like a hibiscus but stay furled in a little turban, glowing here in clear pink rather than red.
Malvaviscus drummondii is the small Turk's cap, the wild, native cousin of the larger Mexican wax mallow and, for many Southern gardeners, the better plant of the two. A relative of the hibiscus in the mallow family, Malvaceae, this shrubby perennial is native to Texas, the Gulf Coast states, and on south, and grows wild in the dappled shade of woodland edges and stream banks where few other bright flowers will bloom.
'Pam Puryear' is the soft-pink small Turk's cap, a lovely departure from the usual fire-engine red of this tough native mallow. The furled, never-quite-open flowers keep the charming Turk's cap form, less than two inches long and produced without pause through the hot months, but here they glow a gentle shell pink that reads cool and quiet in the summer border.
Morella pumila is the dwarf waxmyrtle, a low, native evergreen that keeps everything gardeners love about the common wax myrtle, aromatic foliage, waxy berries, and a tough constitution, and shrinks it all to knee height. Native to the frequently burned pinelands of the southern United States, the plant is an adaptation to that fiery world, staying small and spreading slowly into dense patches and colonies by underground runners.
Muhlenbergia dumosa, bamboo muhly, is a desert-born grass with the grace of bamboo, drifting like cloud shadow across the canyon floor. From the arid uplands and rocky washes of northern Mexico and southern Arizona, where sun-scorched cliffs and canyon walls shaped the character of the species, bamboo muhly evolved to thrive on dry air and lean soils, and yet carries the fluid elegance of true bamboo, swaying at the faintest breeze.
Myrcianthes fragrans is a member of the myrtle family native to the hammocks and coastal scrub of Florida and the Caribbean, the same botanical neighborhood as guava and allspice, which says something about the family character and the quality of the fragrance involved. Crush a leaf and the scent is immediate and specific: nutmeg with a citrus edge, clean and resinous in a way that makes the plant worth encountering even out of flower. The tiny, deep green leaves hold the aromatic oils responsible, and keep that quality year-round.
Magnolia acuminata, the cucumbertree, is the giant of the native magnolias and the only one hardy far into the North. A deciduous forest tree of the eastern United States, most majestic in the southern Appalachians, the cucumbertree can rise seventy to ninety feet into a broad, rounded canopy, valued as a fast-growing, exceptionally hardy shade tree for parks and large lawns.
Magnolia ashei, the Ashe magnolia, is one of the great show-offs of the plant world packed into a shrub-sized frame. The enormous leaves, often two feet long and nearly a foot wide, give a decidedly tropical air, and the flowers are astonishing: creamy-white goblets up to a foot across, sweetly fragrant, each marked with a bold purple blotch at the base of the inner petals. Best of all, the Ashe magnolia blooms while still young and small, sometimes at barely knee height, a rare gift among magnolias.
Magnolia ashei × macrophylla is a rare hybrid of colossal foliage and dinner-plate blooms, a deliberate cross between two of North America's most dramatic native magnolias: the endangered Ashe magnolia, Magnolia ashei, and the bigleaf magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla. The cross brings together the best of both parents, the immense tropical-looking leaves, the enormous fragrant flowers, and a habit that settles into a handsome middle ground between shrub and small tree.
Magnolia cordata is the yellow cucumbertree, a smaller, more garden-friendly cousin of the towering cucumbertree magnolia and, botanically, a variety of it, Magnolia acuminata var. subcordata. Where the parent species climbs seventy feet and hides greenish flowers high in the canopy, this yellow-flowered form stays a modest tree of twenty-five to thirty-five feet and carries the trait breeders have chased for generations: tulip-shaped blooms of clear, canary yellow.
Magnolia figo, the banana shrub, is one of those old Southern garden treasures that scent a whole spring evening, and 'Port Wine' is a fine, deep-colored form. Long grown under the name Michelia figo and only lately folded into the genus Magnolia, the plant makes a large, dense, lustrous evergreen shrub or small tree, handsome in leaf all year but grown, above all, for the perfume.
Magnolia kobus, the kobus magnolia, is a hardy, deciduous magnolia from Japan, grown for a froth of white, lightly fragrant flowers on bare branches in earliest spring. The Japanese name kobushi, from which the species takes its epithet, means fist, a nod to the plump flower buds and knobby young fruit that look like a small clenched hand.
Magnolia macrophylla, the bigleaf magnolia, holds a national record: the largest simple leaves and the largest flowers of any tree native to North America. A deciduous magnolia of rich, sheltered woodlands scattered from West Virginia south to Louisiana and Florida, the tree is scarce in the wild and unforgettable in leaf, with blades up to three feet long and a foot wide, deep green above and a soft silvery white beneath that flashes when the wind turns them.
Magnolia sprengeri 'Diva' is the aristocrat of the pink magnolias, a large, rare deciduous tree from the mountains of western China that smothers itself in spring with big, saucer-shaped flowers of deep rose-pink, sweetly fragrant and opening on bare branches before the leaves. Six to eight inches across and carried in abundance, the blooms make one of the most breathtaking sights in the early garden, yet the tree remains surprisingly little known in American gardens.
Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star' is the star magnolia at its best, a hardy, rounded shrub that opens its first flowers at the very end of winter, well before the leaves, in a froth of white, many-petaled stars. Each bloom carries a dozen or more narrow, strap-like tepals that give a soft, feathery look, and the whole plant can vanish under bloom in a good year, sweetly fragrant into the bargain.
Sweetbay magnolia is one of the loveliest and most useful of the native magnolias, a tree of moist and swampy ground across the eastern United States from Massachusetts to Texas. The northern plants, Magnolia virginiana var. virginiana, are shrubby and deciduous; the southern, var. australis, grow into larger, evergreen trees. All share the sweetbay's gifts: leaves silvery white beneath that flash in the wind, and creamy, intensely fragrant flowers with a clean lemon scent.
Sweetbay magnolia ranges across the moist ground of the eastern United States, from Massachusetts to Texas, and in the South becomes the larger, evergreen tree botanists call Magnolia virginiana var. australis. 'Santa Rosa' is a superior evergreen selection of that southern variety, a Woodlanders introduction gathered in Santa Rosa County, in the Florida panhandle.
Sweetbay is one of the loveliest and most useful of the native magnolias, and this is Sweetbay from the far western edge of the range, the big-leaved, big-flowered form of the Louisiana and east Texas country long known in gardens as Magnolia virginiana ludoviciana. Set against the typical species, these western-Gulf plants carry noticeably larger leaves and flowers, with soft down on the undersides of the leaves and on the flower buds, and grow as small to medium trees of a more open, airy habit.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
20–35 ft.
Spread
15–20 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, general wellness, pain relief
