The magnolia flowers are delicate and beautiful, and their seeds are quite unusual too

Magnolia is a deciduous tree of the Magnoliaceae family, native to the Yangtze River basin of our country, and is a tree species unique to our country. Magnolia blooms before it leafs out, with flowers borne singly at the tips of the branches, extremely elegant. The flower color is jade white, and its fragrance is like that of an orchid, hence its name. It is also called white magnolia, Yutangchun, Wangchunhua, and so on.

In the bright spring month of March, the magnolia flowers burst into bloom, standing gracefully at the tips of the branches, looking pure, plump and elegant. It is usually hard to see magnolia set seed, and fully mature seeds are seen even less often. The photo shows a young fruit that formed after pollination and has a red seed coat, forming around April; they are deformed or upright. They grow into a "chick shape", changing from green to purplish red and then to bright red; the "chick head" part is about 3 cm long, with a total height of about 5 cm, a length of 9 cm and a width of 3 cm. They are covered all over with scales large and small. The young fruit has a long growth period; fruits that mature between May and August have a dark red shell, which splits open after drying to reveal the seeds, and this is around September.

Magnolia is robust by nature and easy to cultivate. It likes sunlight and fertile, deep sandy loam soil, is fairly cold-tolerant, dislikes waterlogging, fears saline-alkaline and clay soils, and tolerates pruning. To propagate magnolia by grafting, do it in spring and autumn, using Sichuan magnolia as the rootstock. Air layering is also commonly used, carried out in April to May or September to October, rooting in about 60 days, and cut down and planted the following year.