Magnolia sieboldii, Oyama magnolia

In the earlier post on the 'Butterflies' magnolia, I was a little dismayed that I had originally bought the plant as a Magnolia sieboldii but it turned out to be a 'Butterflies'. Well what do you know, we were walking through an HD plant section and I saw they had placed three magnolias, one each on the top of some two tiered plant benches. I guess they wanted to attract people's attention to these trees. Well magnolias always catch my attention so I looked at the closest one and almost fell over. The tag read Magnolia sieboldii! They wanted quite a bit for it but with my wife's urging we bought it. The other trees were a 'Leonard Messel which sort of looks like a M. stellata, star magnolia and a Magnolia x soulangeana or saucer magnolia.

The M. sieboldii was about 6 feet tall - a skinny 6 feet, and had more than twenty buds in various stages of development with several which had already cast off its flower casing and showing it's white petal color. I planted it immediately but we had to wait for more than two weeks before the buds opened in yesterday's 80 degree weather.

The flower buds start off sticking straight out or slightly upward but as the flower increases in size the weight of the bloom makes it hang down in a pendant position, making a view of the pink interior stamens all but impossible unless you scrunch down and look up. As the tree grows taller it will be easier to see the colorful interior by just looking up at the blossoms. I've seen photos of sieboldii that have a bright red interior which is more to my liking but the dark pink is ok too. Now that I've looked at a lot of pictures of M. sieboldii, the red colored one may be a figment of some sellers' overblown imagination and a lot of Photoshop manipulation to make the flower look more attractive! More ranting about color manipulation of plants in catalogs at a later time. The flower also has a very nice faint perfume, but you have to stick your nose into the bloom to get a smell.


The bumblebee seems to be mightly attracted to the blossom. It would not budge inspite of the camera sticking up close to it.

So now I have my M. sieboldii at last. I am content.


Update: The flowers don't last very long, 5 days or so but they turn a rather attractive peach color as they age which prolongs the viewing time.