Magnolia denudata Desr.

This member of Section Yulania can look superb in the garden as a small, rounded tree covered in fragrant goblet-shaped white flowers in early spring, decisively before leaf emergence (hence the specific epithet – ‘stripped bare’). although this was not always seen as an advantage. The author (unattributed, but probably John Sims) of the description published in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine in 1814 (t. 1621) thought ‘it is far less agreeable than the Magnolia grandiflora, whose beautiful blossoms are beautifully contrasted, by being embosomed in large shining leaves.’ Intrinsically a hardy tree, it has one great fault: the flowers are easily browned by even quite slight frosts, which is highly disfiguring.

It has a long history in cultivation, grown in Chinese temple gardens since the Tang Dynasty (618–907) and soon spreading to Japan (Treseder 1978). George Forrest waxed lyrical over the sight of an avenue of well grown specimens in full flower at a large house in W Yunnan (fide Savage 1974). It is today planted as a street tree in some Chinese cities. Introduction to the West was almost certainly from Asiatic cultivation, and is usually credited to the British botanical explorer and establishment insider Sir Joseph Banks, in the 1780s (Gardiner 2000). Banks himself collected many living plants on his travels (most famously with James Cook) but later orchestrated collecting efforts by others. It was long an uncommon tree in Britain, with a few famous specimens in the London area, becoming commoner when Dutch nurseries began to propagate it by grafting on M. × soulangeana (Bean 1981). It was in North American commerce by 1854 (Jacobson 1996). This clone remains one of the best, with large pure white flowers and a delicious lemony fragrance. It ought to be distinguished by a cultivar name.

Introductions from China have clearly continued, but no recent collections stand out. Their status is often clouded by possible misidentification, and the possibility of plants cultivated in China being collected as if they were wild. For example, NACPEC 02058 (Shaanxi 2002) has proved not to be M. denudata, rather perhaps M. biondii, while some other siupposedly wild collections received by the US National Arboretum were from areas where the species has not been recorded as a wild plant (US National Arboretum 2022).

In cultivation M. denudata makes a multi-stemmed shrub or broad, spreading, small tree. Quite variable in vigour, some 100-year-old specimens may only have a height and span of around 9 m. Much taller specimens are certainly exceptional, for example trees at the Valley Gardens, Windsor Great Park (14.5 m × 161 cm, 2021) and Pencarrow, Cornwall (15 m × 136 cm, 2016 – The Tree Register 2021). It is best grown in sun or light, dappled shade. A rich, moisture retentive, somewhat acidic soil is ideal, although it will tolerate alkaline soil given adequate summer moisture.

M. denudata flowers well from a young age. Flowers vary in size and colour. Seedlings in Chinese cultivation range from the typical pure white to yellow or pink, by way of ivory and blush (M. Robinson pers. comm. to J. Gardiner, 1997). Some of this range is seen in Western cultivars. However, the status of these colour forms is cast in doubt by the discovery that the well established ‘Forrest’s Pink’ (pink tepals, darker at base) and ‘Purple Eye’ (white with purple bases) are respectively heptaploid and octaploid, and hence almost certainly hybrids (unpublished flow cytometry data of R. Olsen & S. Lura (2013) cited by US National Arboretum 2022 and Lobdell 2021). We continue provisionally to list other pigmented cultivars here in the absence of direct evidence. Again controversially, this time on the gastronomic front, tepals of M. denudata are considered a delicacy by some: dipped in flour and fried in oil until crisp, they have a slightly sweet taste (Gardiner 2000).

In Europe it is widely grown from Britain, Ireland and France east to Germany and Poland, where its hardiness is limited, with damage to buds and branchlets in severe winters (Anisko & Czekalski 1991). In North America it proves ‘amazingly adaptable’ (Dirr 2009) growing on both seaboards from Maine to Florida and Washington to S California, as well as in the Great Lakes area; around St Louis, MO it is marginal (Missouri Botanical Garden 2021).

M. denudata is a parent of the important hybrids M. × soulangeana and M. × veitchii, also more recently of ‘Elizabeth’ and other yellow flowered hybrids.