Yellow Bird Lives

Yes, in answer to a reader's email, my 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia (Magnolia acuminata or Magnolia brooklynensis?)  still lives and bloomed again this year.  I was frightened for the display given our late unexpected snows and freezes this year, and I thought the last snow would knock off all the newly formed buds, but she still bloomed, although later and perhaps not quite as bountifully.  I think I can now attest to the hardiness of this tree here.  In the past three years she has withstood drought (albeit with a little extra water), early frosts, late freezes, and winter low temperatures of -10°F, and she has still grown and bloomed both years.  I think the high winds bother her the most, ripping the leaves a little here and there.


The 3rd picture below is an overall shot of the tree yesterday morning just after sunrise.  The peak bloom is already over as evidenced by the yellow petals on the ground, but some delicate flowers still remain to brighten my day.  Some have also asked why she is enclosed in a wire cage, and my simple answer is that I don't trust the large furry rats (deer) in my area. Those fuzzy plump buds look so inviting, I'm afraid that my baby will be nibbled to sticks if I leave her exposed.  And what they don't eat, the deer like to scour down to raw wood during rutting season.  So, caged she'll be until she gets branches above deer height.  She's grown about a foot each year since I purchased her.




Some garden experts and writers have written that Yellow Bird's flowers do not display well since they appear after the foliage, but I much prefer this arrangement to the "blooming on naked stems" look of my other magnolias. Blooming after the leaves open  protects the blooms from the late frosts!  The glossy yellow-green leaves of 'Yellow Bird' set off the flowers to perfection, in my opinion, and the experts will just have to suffer with the knowledge that they are wrong. 

Magnificent Magnolias

Magnolia 'Jane'

I still linger in wonder, sometimes, that I have not only one but three magnolias growing in my Kansas garden.  I associate magnolias so strongly with the true Southern United States, that I simply have trouble accepting these large leathery petals will survive on the Kansas prairie.  If the cold doesn't kill them in the long run, surely the dryness and wind will.  I wasn't much of a gardener at the time, but I don't recall them growing in the zone 5B area of my Indiana childhood, so I never expected them here.  I was only experimenting when I first attempted Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star' here, pessimistically expecting only a wasted effort, but it is difficult to argue with success.

'Jane', on the prairie

They're all blooming now, all three of my magnolias, causing me to daydream of dinosaurs and foot-wide dragonflys, coal swamps and pterodactyls.  Something about those large leathery tepals and the deep musky scent evokes a memory from deep in my brainstem, instincts and dreams from times past.  This is one of the early flowers, the Dawn Flowers, as Earth's flora leaped into the sexual reproduction revolution and left the cycads and conifers behind.  Magnolias, evolving before the appearance of bees, were forced to toughen up their carpels into these rigid toothy mounds so the heavy, ungraceful beetles of the time could facilitate pollen transfer.  The glorious center organ of my young 'Jane', pictured above right and as a whole bush to the left, just seems to scream of warmth and dampness and sex, does it not?

Magnolia 'Yellow Bird'

Every year, I hold my breath until my Magnolias bloom, particularly until my baby 'Yellow Bird' (Magnolia acuminata 'Yellow Bird') shows signs of life, always hoping against hope that this year will not be the one I'm taught a painful lesson about the dangers of zonal denial.  Magnolias always burst into bloom naked, with no warning by accompanying leaves that life has begun again.  This year again, 'Yellow Bird' became, for a short time, the focus of my garden, tiny though it is, even prompting Mrs. ProfessorRoush to ask me what the beautiful yellow shrub was in the back garden.  I always know I've got a hit on my hands when it registers on the consciousness of my horticulturally unaware spouse.  I personally thought the yellow hue was a little less bright this year than last, perhaps "washed out" by the extremely wet weather a few days before these buds opened, or perhaps less developed when the rapid onset of heat pushed these flowers into an early Spring.  I was shocked to reread last year's post on the first bloom of 'Yellow Bird', dated April 18th, 2011, knowing all the while the tree has almost finished blooming this year at this end of March.   Again, evidence of an extremely early Spring.

'Yellow Bird' at 2 years

Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star'

And, as always, Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star' was the anchor of the Spring season, opening a couple of weeks back with the first scented bloom of Spring.  It always preempts the stage before the Witch Hazel here, before the tulips, almost before the daffodils.  This year it bloomed only briefly but gloriously, showing the ground with fresh clean white tepals during the strong winds and rains a week past.  Right now, unusually, some tardy buds are blooming again, making sure that this shrub makes its statement in my garden for another year.  A last brief shout before the rapidly developing summer heat makes this Magnolia dream again of dinosaurs past.

Yellow Bird Magnolia

My "most awaited newcomer" has been teasing me for over a week now by performing a slow strip-tease, sepal by sepal, to expose her inner beauty.  And here it is, my much anticipated Magnolia acuminata 'Yellow Bird'.  Isn't she a beaut?  

Last year I attended a seminar at a locally-owned nursery, Blueville Nursery, which offered a 20% discount that night for EMG purchases and this small 3-foot specimen grabbed my eye.  Although a bit pricey, she screamed "but I'm 20% off!" at me and I took her home.  I've been stretching into the Magnolias over the past few years and I'd been looking for a yellow magnolia, perhaps Magnolia acuminata X M. denudata 'Butterflies', to become the third magnolia experiment in my garden.  I'd seen 'Butterflies' at another local nursery as a full-grown specimen and it is impressive when it wasn't frost damaged, but the yellow of 'Butterflies' is much paler than the single bloom that was present on 'Yellow Bird' when I bought it, so 'Yellow Bird' became my girl.

Now that she is blooming, I think 'Yellow Bird' is one of the most aptly-named plants I've ever seen.  Across the garden, even my small specimen looks like there are 8 or 10 canaries perched on the little tree, the 3 1/2 inch flowers exactly the right yellow to stand out from the surroundings.  'Yellow Bird' was bred in 1967 and is a 1981 Brooklyn Botanic Garden introduction that is hardy from zone 5-9.  She seems to have opened a week or two later than both my M. stellata and my 'Jane' magnolia, so I hope that she will give me a reliable bloom here in Zone 5b, unaccompanied by late frost damage in most years that we see on some magnolias here.  Certainly, she has survived her first year here, a dry winter, with "flying colors" (please pardon the pun, couldn't resist).  'Yellow Bird' has a substantial pedigree, descending from a cross between the American native Magnolia acuminata and the Chinese Magnolia lilliflora and then recrossed as an early Brooklynensis, Magnolia 'Evamaria' with M. I. subcordata.  In fact, some sources drop the Magnolia acuminata designation and simply list it as Magnolia x brooklynensis 'Yellow Bird'.  A mongrel she may be, but the intercontinental crosses have resulted in an exceptional and hardy beauty.  

I see that Monrovia has recommended 'Yellow Bird' paired with 'Blue Moon' Wisteria macrostachya.  As one of my wisterias is beginning blooming at another part of the garden, I can imagine how the blue-purple wisteria would climb up into 'Yellow Bird' and capture your soul.  I'm not about to chance this specimen to the choking vines of wisteria, though, so perhaps I'll have to justify another specimen in the garden somewhere.  Unlike the description on one website which stated that the flowers appear after the leaves and so can be lost amid them, , my 'Yellow Bird' has blooms only at this time, and the leaves are just beginning to open.  The same website also stated that it doesn't like dry conditions, that it likes acid soils, and that it might live only 8-10 years, so I hope that site is wrong on these latter counts as well.  Time will reveal the truth.

'Yellow Bird' is supposed to grow 35-40 feet fall and 25 feet wide at maturity, so I can't imagine what a specimen she is going to make in my garden when she reaches full growth.  She is labeled as a fast grower, so if I have some luck and practice good nutrition, and exercise, I might have a chance to live to see this tree fully grown someday, a little gem elevated into eye-popping maturity.