Hi! I live in Porto, Portugal and our climate is atlantic temperate, it hardly ever goes below zero or snow. I have a Magnolia to take care of, because I think it needs to be looked after. Nothing has been done to it in the last 30 years because the house next to it was closed. As you can see from the picture it is extremely dense and tilted. Some effort was done this last summer to cut dead wood, but I find it difficult to reach anywhere inside the maze. I have to cut it a bit on the right to allow cars through the gate, since the tree pushes the gate closed. I don't know if anything else should be done. I don't know its species, and can only guess its age, at least 30 years, the flower is pink. I know it is deciduous. I attach a picture of this Magnolia in February (no leefs) and August 2004. On the Magnolia's left is a water tank, it is normal for this tank to overflow and water to run down the steps and flood the tree's foot. At this time, it is budding, so I get confused as to when to be able to cut it. Can I have some advice please?
Aside from pruning the tree to allow for the gate to open is there a reason you want to prune this tree other than to trim out the outer and internal dead growth and some of the crossing branches? A good time to prune out the dead wood is when the Magnolia has leaves on the tree as then we can better see what limbs are alive and which ones are not. Are you concerned that the listing of the tree may cause it to fall over at some point in time? I am seeing a healthy and nice looking tree overall in a very nice setting. I am not sure I should ask this but are you certain this tree has not been pruned within the last 30 years? The reason why I asked is that right offhand I cannot think of too many naturally occurring round and full headed pink flowering deciduous Magnolias. Now I'd like to know which Magnolia you have if this tree grew into this shape all on its own. Here we have to prune these trees every few years to get the overall shape that your tree has. Jim
My first problem is when to do anything, since, problably due to to the climate, the tree is flowering at this time and this is not coincident with any information I've found on Magnolias, do you think I should cut the part to allow the cars through as soon as the flowers are gone, or should I wait till February? I've read so much about not doing anything to Magnolias and wounds bleeding, that I don't want to do harm. I also have a problem with finding what is dead wood to cut due to the tree's density, specially when there is leefs, maybe I can now see what is budding and what isn't and mark the dead wood with a string for later pruning, what do you think? Or if it's dead wood I can cut it at any time? The only cuts that where done to the tree were to clear access to the water tank, nothing else, I suppose that and the wall behind it explain the listing. I don't think the tree is in any risk of falling, so I don't need to do anything else, really.
M. liliiflora and hybrids often have a curving trunk. Post a photo of flowers for more information about identity.
The dead wood can be cut out of the tree anytime of the year. Those cuts will not cause any bleeding. Bleeding is not a big issue with deciduous Magnolias unless cuts are made right before Winter or right before flowering or during flowering in the Spring where you are. After the leaves have emerged, opened up and filled the tree the bleeding becomes a non issue in a temperate climate. If you normally have flowers in mid to late February just as we do here where I am also with most but not all of our deciduous Magnolias, then wait until early to mid April to prune your tree if your are worried about when to prune it. Do you want cars to be able to go under the tree unimpeded as that is not a problem, just take off the lowest limb that is parallel to your water tank and then trim from the bottom up to relieve stress off the trunk and give you more access to the other dead wood that is visible in the second photo. Other than removal of that large limb and some small cuts to allow the gate to open and close I see no other pruning cuts that should be made, other than to cut out all of the dead wood back to where the dead limb attaches to the branch. Try to cut flush to the live wood as possible. No jagged or angular cuts when cutting back to live wood on a Magnolia. If you do not have any photos of your Magnolia can you describe the flower other than to say it is pink. Does the flower start out pink and then fade to white before the tepals (petals for most trees but for Magnolias they are called tepals) fall? Are the tepals purple then shade to pink before the tepals fall? Wish you could tell me how many tepals there are such a 9 or 6 tepals or as many as 12 or more tepals to a flower but I have a feeling we are looking at 9 tepals per flower for your tree. Jim
Called tepals on these extremely ancient trees because they predate differentiation into petals and sepals. Sepal-like tepals found on outside of some, such as M. liliiflora are called sepaloid tepals.
First of all thanks for all the advice. It's very useful. I believe you thought it was spring here at the moment, but it isn't, it's late autumn. I don't know why the Magnolia has buttons at the moment, it does, but flowers are only expected in February/March. I did manage to find a picture which I could enlarge to show some flowers from March 2004, I can't picture them exactly but as I recall there are few tepals :) , I can't precise how many. As soon as I have some good pictures of the flowers I'll post them.
Liliflora Magnolias have a tendency to have some rebloom late in the year. We always have some late Summer, early Autumn, blooms on some of our Liliflora hybrids such as 'Susan', 'Randy' and 'Royal Crown' and liliflora 'Nigra' as examples. The tepal count within these above will vary from 6 - 12. Tepal count is rather important to know with the Liliflora forms and the Liliflora hybrids. With some of the hybrids we can have a varying number of tepals per flower but some of the above have the same basic tepal count per flower, year in and year out. Yours appears to be one that has a tepal count of 8-10, with most of the flowers having 9 tepals. Ron had this one pegged all the way it seems. Jim
