‘Tis the season for Magnolia doltsopa to bloom. It being midwinter, this immediately means it is a plant for milder climates and it has been a popular plant purchase in our area for many years. It used to be known as Michelia doltsopa but michelias have been swallowed up into the bigger family of magnolia now.

As I scan the roadsides looking for deciduous magnolias opening their early season blooms, it surprises me how often the immediate take from the car window is to wonder what is the white deciduous magnolia flowering now. In fact, on second look, I realise it is the allegedly evergreen M. doltsopa. Often the lowest leaves on the tree are hanging on for grim death while all the exposed branches further up have abandoned the effort. The fresh foliage will start to show over the next few weeks and what is happening is that the tree is opening its flowers and dropping its leaves at the same time. Semi-deciduous rather than fully deciduous in that it drops an almost full set of leaves for a very short space of time.

I have not put a lot of thought to M. doltsopa over the years, I admit. It is an evergreen species that comes from the eastern Himalayas (low altitude, I assume) and north eastern India. Being a species, in the wild it will spread by seed and those seedlings can be variable. There was an importation of doltsopa to Taranaki, the area where we live, at some stage in the late 1950s, maybe early 60s. We don’t know if they came in as seed or as small plants but Felix received one or two and the magnificent specimen in our park dates back to there. There are a few others of that importation around the province, mostly in private gardens of the day.

Of the ones I have seen, I think we got the best form. It is H U G E, so big that we never propagated it to sell because there aren’t many people who have the space of a small town section or more to give to one plant. Cambridge nurseryman, Peter Cave, sold a few under the name of ‘Rusty’ on account of its significant feature of furry indumentum that is not seen on most of the other forms of the same species. ‘Rusty’ never defoliates, has very large flowers and the desired fragrance.

I photographed a different doltsopa seedling from the same batch imported 60 years ago in a friend’s garden, though this is not the original plant. It is referred to as the Rayner form, on account of the original plant being in the Rayner’s garden of the day  in central Taranaki. It is big, it keeps a full set of leaves but the flowers are not as large as our one and it lacks the appealing indumentum.

I think most of the defoliated plants I see around are a named clone, ‘Silver Cloud’, selected by the once important nursery, Duncan and Davies, for slightly easier propagation properties and its large flower. I thought it was meant to be smaller growing too but then I photographed this one (below) in the same garden as the Rayner form and I am not sure I would call that smaller growing.

Back in earlier days, before ‘Silver Cloud’ was widely available, doltsopa seedlings were being sold. By seedlings, I mean plants raised from seed so showing variation whereas every ‘Silver Cloud’ in existence should share the same plant genes as the one original plant because they are propagated by layering or budding, not raised from seed. We know about the next generation of doltsopa seedlings being raised and sold because Hawera nurseryman and friend of Mark’s dad Felix, Roly Barry was collecting seed here from both ‘Rusty’ and ‘Silver Cloud’ which were then planted side by side to increase seed production by cross pollination.

Mark’s hybrid which is named Fairy Magnolia White® is half doltsopa. When it came to describing it, Mark has always referred to it as ‘a garden-friendly doltsopa type’. I usually try and avoid shameless self-promotion even thought this is my own site, but after surveying all the doltsopas I pass around and about, I will say that I think Mark’s ‘Fairy White’ is a superior garden plant all round. It never defoliates, it prunes well, it flowers prolifically amongst healthy foliage and its flowers are not only well-formed and very pretty, they are also very fragrant. I would plant it ahead of ‘Silver Cloud’ any day.