Magnolia seed

[Giles]

I finished off the last of my seed sowing today, and have some left over:
Magnolia acuminata
Magnolia denudata
Magnolia wilsonii
(special alpine forms  )
PM me if it's of any interest.
Giles

[Lesley Cox]

I'll look forward to your pictures of the flowering plants in due course Giles. It will be intersting to see how long they take to bloom.

[Giles]

 

[TC]

I sowed several varieties of Magnolia from 2003/06 and was overwhelmed with the results.  I had great success with Wilsonii, Sieboldii, Watsonii, Campbellii and Sprengeri.  So many seedlings came up that I had to find homes for them.  Eventually I found a home for 37 Sieboldii with someone I knew with a 10 acre garden.  We thought that an avenue would look rather spectacular, but, given the time it takes to flowering, probably neither of us will see it !

[Onion]

Lesley,
Magnolia wilsonii need, like the very similar M. sieboldii 5 to 6 years for the first flowers.
Magnolia acuminata need two years more. You can speed up the procedure, when grafting on rootstocks.
M. sieboldii and M. wilsonii then flowers after 3 years. The yellow M. acuminata cultivars as 'Yellow River' etc. need also three years.

[Lesley Cox]

Well that's not so long. M campbelli takes about 15 years in NZ but I believe takes longer in the UK. We have superb big trees of it here in Dunedin from the original Fortune collection.

[Onion]

Because of this it takes a long time to breed new cultivars. 'Yellow Bird' was developed 1967 at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York and introduced 1981. The second generation of yellow Hybrids are now available, in low quantities in the nurseries here in Germany.