Magnolia virginiana (Dodd's small leaf)

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.

'Dodd's Small Leaf' is a distinctive clone of the southern, evergreen variety, and the plant came to us with a good story. To the amusement of the late, great Tom Dodd, Jr., we did not even recognize the plant as a sweetbay when we first saw it exhibited by Tom Dodd Nurseries at the Atlanta trade show some years ago: where a typical sweetbay carries four- or five-inch leaves, this form bears leaves barely two inches long, with small flowers to match. Mr. Dodd shared several plants with us, and they are now sizeable trees at Hopelands Gardens here in Aiken, South Carolina.

The lineage carries a little mystery. There are said to be several clones named for Alabama rivers, though we believe they are much alike, and we do not know for certain which one we grow. Mr. Dodd recalled that the seed-parent tree, apparently an ordinary sweetbay, stood at Coden, Alabama, and that a number of seedlings raised at the nursery came out as this small-leaf form. Recent word suggests we are propagating the clone 'Tensaw', reputedly the only one that roots readily from cuttings.

Whatever the name, the plant is a charmer: a fine-textured, small-leaved evergreen sweetbay, more delicate in effect than the ordinary kind and lovely as a multi-stemmed small tree at a pond edge, a stream margin, a moist border, or the woodland edge. Give moist, acidic soil in sun to part shade, and enjoy the lemon-scented summer flowers, which draw pollinators and feed the caterpillars of the eastern tiger swallowtail. Few native trees give so much fragrance and fine texture for so little trouble.