Can anyone tell me the name of this shrub or small tree, and something about the conditions or care it needs?
Wow, Ron, that was quick! :-) Do you have one of these? I do and must say I am not too happy about it. This madam is a bit of a ... stiff-neck. It only gows when it feels like it and for no reason loses branches. A bit like tripetala. Any cure to this?
If it has a stunting and dieback problem there may be pathogens on the roots or crown. Honey fungus in particular is often mentioned in connection with magnolias, I think this is what took out my bigleaf magnolia last year.
We had a problem with very mild winter this year and although magnolias here do not usually suffer from virtually anything this year we are experiencing so many diseases like never before - leaf spot, powdery mildew and others which I can´t even name in English. Speaking of magnolias, we have just had fresh flowers on m. Yellow Bird. Quite strange at this time of year. Lilifloras do make occasional flowers throughout summer but these yellow hybrids never did. I am a big magnolia fan living in zone 6 in Europe. Once I fell in love with m.grandiflora and though everyone said it would die here I spent hours and miles in my car travelling around the continent in search for one that could make it through our winters. And I found it - my very first was Brackens Brown Beauty and it is just gorgeous, see the image. It lost most of the leaves after transplanting (I got one that was nearly 4m tall) but when established it started making leaves on bare branches and even the truck from the bottom upwards. This year it must have had a couple of hundreds of flowers already.
Thanks! I rescued this magnolia from a lot that sat vacant after the house burned down. It has suffered at least two summers of drought, and was dry as a stick when I got it.
