Magnolia ashei

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.

This is a genuine rarity. Ashe magnolia is endemic to a handful of counties in the Florida panhandle, where the plant clings to shaded bluffs and rich ravine slopes above panhandle streams, and the species is listed as endangered in the wild. Botanists now often treat the plant as a variety of the bigleaf magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla var. ashei, to which the shrub is closely kin but far more compact. The name honors William Willard Ashe, the pioneering United States Forest Service forester, while the genus Magnolia remembers the French botanist Pierre Magnol.

Rare in the wild, Ashe magnolia is a superb and surprisingly adaptable ornamental, hardy far north of the narrow native range, into the mid-Atlantic and beyond. The modest, spreading, shrub-to-small-tree habit, fifteen to twenty feet in time, suits a garden far better than the towering bigleaf magnolia, and the early, generous flowering makes even a young plant a centerpiece. Small wonder this is one of our best sellers.

Site the Ashe magnolia thoughtfully: the huge leaves tear in wind, so choose a sheltered spot with rich, moist, well-drained soil and some shade from hot afternoon sun. Set the plant where the vast leaves and dinner-plate flowers can be admired at close range, against a backdrop of darker evergreens, and underplant with ferns and other woodlanders. Keep the roots cool and moist, mulch well, and this Florida rarity will reward a Southern or mid-Atlantic garden with a yearly show few plants can equal.