Tag Archives: magnolia breeding

The Jury Magnolias. A retrospective view.

Written for and first published in the International Magnolia Society journal. In the time since writing the text and publication, we are now able to release details of the three new deciduous magnolia hybrids being released internationally.

The Jury magnolia reputation rests on just twelve deciduous magnolias so far. Soon there will be fifteen and it may end up at seventeen in total. Despite originating on a farm in far-flung New Zealand, some of those plants have had a significant impact in the international magnolia world.

Felix in his garden, 1985. Photo credit: Fiona Clark

Felix Jury was a farmer who decided he would rather garden. He handed over the family farm to his second son as soon as he could and devoted his time and energy to building a large garden. He started by buying plants, importing new material from around the world. It was the failure of many of these to thrive in our warm temperate conditions that started him on the hybridising path. He was a self-taught amateur; like many of his contemporaries of the day, he became proficient at raising seed, striking cuttings, budding and grafting across a wide range of genus but it was always on a small scale, hobby basis. For an amateur, some of his plants have stood the test of time across the world. Phormium ‘Yellow Wave’ is still being produced internationally in surprisingly large numbers and Camellias ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Waterlily’ have remained household names in the camellia world. He never received a cent in payment for any of these plants. Over time, it is his magnolias that have firmly cemented his name in international gardening.

Mark Jury was Felix’s youngest son. By the time Mark and I returned to the family property in 1980 with Mark planning to set up a plant nursery, his father had scaled down his adventures with plants and quietly retired to the garden. It was a privilege for both father and son to have seventeen years working closely together in remarkable harmony. Felix was able to transfer all his knowledge and experience to Mark who was keen to continue the garden development and to take the plant breeding to the next level. Unlike his father, Mark needed to generate an income. Also self-taught, Mark started the nursery, literally building up from one wheelbarrow to a successful boutique business doing mail-order, wholesale and on-site retail.

Felix didn’t raise large numbers of magnolias from his controlled crosses. They would probably number no more than fifty and over a few years only in the 1960s. Of these, eight ended up being named and released commercially. Technically, there were nine but we will return to the irritating matter of the ninth later. He would have named more but Mark vetoed that. From an early stage, Mark took the view that fewer and more stringent selections were better than more when it comes to a genus with the potential to be long-term trees in the landscape.

Of those eight, Mark has felt that probably only six should have been named. He singles out sister seedlings ‘Milky Way’ and ‘Athene’ as two that could have been narrowed down to one. For a long time, he said the same thing of ‘Iolanthe’ and ‘Atlas’ but has had to change his tune. While we regard ‘Iolanthe’ as a flagship magnolia, arguably one of the best two Felix bred in New Zealand conditions, it has never performed as well overseas and is certainly not rated as highly elsewhere. ‘Atlas’ has a larger bloom and is a prettier pink but its flowering season is short – by our standards – and we don’t often see it in its full glory because the petals are too soft and get badly weather-marked. But ‘Atlas’ appears to be hardier in overseas climates and a better performer elsewhere than it is here.

and ‘Athene’. Even we have trouble telling them apart at times, particularly in photo close-ups. We can usually tell by looking at the tree and time of flowering or side by side comparisons, but we have to think about it every time.

In those days, the range of magnolias available commercially was small. Felix’s initial goal was to see if he could create hybrids that would flower on young plants and stay a garden-friendly size. It was generally accepted that when a magnolia was planted, it was realistic to expect a delay of between about seven and fifteen years to get the first blooms. He also liked the cup and saucer flower form and he wanted more colour. Of his named hybrids, six of the eight had a chance hybrid in their parentage. It was the cross he received from Hillier’s Nursery as a seedling of M. campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’. Mark has always referred to it as his father’s secret weapon. When it flowered, it was clear it was not ‘Lanarth’ but a hybrid, presumed to be with M. sargentiana robusta. He duly named it for his favourite son so it is known as Magnolia ‘Mark Jury’.

Felix’s breeder parent – M. ‘Mark Jury’ – is always distinctive with its very large blooms and pronounced recurved petals

Felix’s two greatest achievements were in creating large-flowered hybrids that bloomed on young plants and in introducing the breakthrough to red shades with his cultivar ‘Vulcan’.

Possibly under-appreciated are the additional factors of heavy textured petals, solid flower form and the setting of flower buds down the stems so blooms open in sequence, rather than just tip buds that all open at once for a mass display that may only last a fortnight. Our springtime is characterised by unsettled weather; Mark refers to the magnolia storms. One overnight storm can destroy the display of softer booms like M. sprengeri var. ‘Diva’ or wipe out the tip bud display of ‘Sweetheart’ (a ‘Caerhays Belle’ seedling).

Magnolia ‘Vulcan’ at its early season best

The performance of ‘Vulcan’ around the world has been well documented and ranges from brilliant to undeniably disappointing.

I will say that ‘Vulcan’ was the only plant we have ever put on the market which we could track its flowering by the phone calls we received year on year. Being a long, thin country in the southern latitudes, magnolias open first in the warmer north and then in sequence heading down the country. The phone would start ringing in early June from the north and continue through August from more southern areas. That is a stand-out plant.

Whatever its flaws, ‘Vulcan’ opened the door to the plethora of red hybrids now available internationally and it remains a key foundation plant in the development of new hybrids.

Mark, picking seedling blooms to compare back in 2013

Like father, like daughter. I recently found this photo of our second child holding her father’s blooms from twenty years earlier – likely the first blooms from some of Mark’s earliest crosses

Mark started hybridising magnolias in the 1980s, picking up where his father had left off and using the same genetic base. He has raised many more controlled crosses than his father ever did. We have never counted how many but it will be well into the thousands. Of those, only four have been named and released and there is another tranche of three which are being built up for release internationally. That makes seven Mark Jury magnolias and all are distinctly different.

Ill health has cut short Mark’s breeding programme and we are now assessing the final batches of his breeding efforts. He has already decided that he has done as much as he can with the reds so he has ruled out the next generations of those and we are now looking at his yellows. We are hopeful that we will get maybe two final selections so he may end up with nine named magnolias in total.

He has always been particularly proud of the cultivar he named for his father, Magnolia ‘Felix Jury’. He reached the goal Felix had set – a tree that will not get excessively large but with very large, colourful blooms from an early age. It has always delighted us that Felix was still alive to see it bloom. In our climate, the colour can vary from rich pink through to deep red, at its best. Over the years, we have learned that the colour in magnolias can bleach out, particularly in colder climates, and we get exceptionally rich colour in New Zealand. Presumably this is related to the very clear light that we have, along with the soils and mild climate (never very hot and never particularly cold). ‘Felix Jury’ keeps its size and form in different climates and even when the colour is lighter in shade, it is an acceptable pink, albeit not the stronger shades we see here.

Both Mark’s ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’ are showing up in the breeding of countless cultivars across the magnolia world and are clearly having long-term influence. ‘Black Tulip’ sets seed readily and it seems every man, woman and their dog have raised seedlings, judging by the photos we have seen. None appear to be an improvement on the parent to our eyes and not many have taken it in a different direction. But its impact on the development of new hybrids is clear to see. Mark has raised hundreds of his own ‘Black Tulip’ hybrids so we see many, many lookalikes but few stand-outs.

We have high hopes of the last red he has selected which is one of the three new ones to be released. He bypassed ‘Black Tulip’ and went back to his father’s ‘Vulcan’ as one of the parents. We don’t rush selections based on flower alone; this one goes back 20 years but its shade of red stood out from the start and the original plant has never had an off-season. It has lost the muddy purple undertones of ‘Vulcan’ and keeps its rich shade of red right through the exceptionally long flowering season. It starts a little later than ‘Vulcan’ so is less vulnerable to late frosts and the late season blooms are as good as the first ones. We describe it as a ‘Vulcan’ upgrade. It has kept the best features but eliminated the undesirable characteristics. Only time will tell if this is true in other climates but keep an eye out for this ruby red selection in the coming years.

Mark turned his attention to the yellows. The magnolia world is awash with yellow hybrids, so many that it is hard to pick out the ones that are superior. Mark’s dream was of a big, pure yellow flower in the cup and saucer form of M.campbellii but on a tree that opens its flowers before its foliage appears, and in a garden-friendly size. A yellow ‘Iolanthe’ or ‘Felix Jury’, so to speak.

Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ – the only yellow Mark has named so far

His ‘Honey Tulip’ was a step on the way. It was a break away from the pointed buds, narrow petals and small flowers that come from the dominant M.acuminata parentage. It isn’t the butter yellow he wanted but it met the brief of solid flower structure and thick texture, flowered before leaf-break and stayed small enough for most gardens. Importantly, the colour does not fade out as the season progresses.

The next generations have taken it further. He has the strong, clear yellow he wanted, the large flower size, the flower form, the slightly earlier blooming season to beat leaf-break and the garden friendly habit of growth. He just doesn’t have them all on the same plant.

If we could just take the best aspect of each of the seedlings and get them all onto one plant, that would be good.

The goal of a big, pure yellow, cup and saucer magnolia is achievable but Mark has run out of time and energy. It will take another generation of plant breeder to reach it. That said, there are probably a couple of good yellows that are significant steps along the way that we should get out of the last batch of seedlings. One, in particular, is a very pretty lemon-yellow (so not the strong colour he wanted but still yellow) with the desired flower size and form and it is blooming from an early age although the flowers coincide with leaf-break. It is hard to reach perfection.

Sunset shades and caramel shades but none good enough to select yet

There are a few striking sunset mixes of strong colour on goblet shaped blooms but none of them look good enough to select. Plant selection is always made on a variety of criteria but Mark’s personal preference for solid colour is strong. Every magnolia he has named is one colour inside and out because that is what he likes. I had to twist his arm to even look at the sunset mixes; he does not think pink and yellow is a pleasing combination. He is also dismissive of what he calls ‘novelty blooms’. I marked one seedling that had distinctive, caramel-coloured blooms. Viewed close-up, they are interesting but I had to concede he was right. On the tree, they will just look like they have been hit by frost.

Always, we are selecting for plants that will look good over time in the landscape. Looking interesting as a cut flower in a vase is not enough, given the magnolia is a landscape tree with long term potential.

I mentioned the irritating ninth Felix Jury hybrid at the start. It is Magnolia ‘Eleanor May’ and I wouldn’t even reference it except I saw a photo lauding its merits in the UK this year. I don’t have a photo of it in my files which indicates the low esteem we hold it in. While it is a seedling from Felix’s breeding programme, we don’t claim it as a Jury hybrid. It is a full sister to ‘Iolanthe’ and a rejected seedling. Felix provided material of it to the nursery Duncan and Davies to use as a good root stock. From there, the nursery sent out a few failed grafts of ‘Iolanthe’ to garden centres by mistake. One plant was purchased by a customer who was observant enough to pick the difference when it flowered. He then took it upon himself to name it for his wife which may have been legal but was certainly lacking in courtesy. As far as we are concerned, it is inferior to ‘Iolanthe’, had already been rejected in selection and was an escapee by mistake. Besides, when we question releasing two of the same cross – ‘Iolanthe’ and ‘Atlas’ – why would we want to claim a third of the same cross? We have a property filled with sister seedlings which we would hate to see unleashed onto an over-crowded magnolia market.

Starting with predominantly white genus, Mark has reached into the pinks, purples, peach tones and lemon as well as bicolours.

Mark’s more recent work with hardier members of the michelia group is another story. The first three selections are on the international market under the Fairy Magnolia® branding. They are in white, cream and soft pink and the next two on the way are in shades of peach and blackberry ripple. We are now onto the final round of selections which are into the bicolours and purple.

Getting there – definitely lemon but not yellow enough

The dark pinks and purples have been more rewarding than the yellows

Again, he has come up short on a strong yellow that is good enough to select and, regretfully, the really pretty apricot ones have not made the grade. But we know that those colours are within reach without sacrificing hardiness. Mark wryly describes his work on michelias as ‘RFI’. That is Room for Improvement. It will take another breeder to get there but there is plenty of promise and scope to take them further.

Labelled ‘FM Baby’ in my files, this new selection is being released as Fairy Magnolia® ‘Petite Peach’

Felix Jury magnolias

Apollo (probably liliiflora nigra hybrid x campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’)

Athene (‘Lennei Alba’ x ‘Mark Jury’)

Atlas (‘Lennei’ x ‘Mark Jury’)

Iolanthe (‘Lennei’ x ‘Mark Jury’)

Lotus (‘Lennei Alba’ x ‘Mark Jury’)

Milky Way (‘Lennei Alba’ x ‘Mark Jury’)

Serene (liliflora x ‘Mark Jury’)

Vulcan (liliiflora hybrid x ‘Lanarth’)

Mark Jury magnolias

Black Tulip (‘Vulcan’ x)

Burgundy Star™ (liliiflora nigra x ‘Vulcan’)

Felix Jury (‘Atlas’ x ‘Vulcan’)

Honey Tulip (‘Yellow Bird’ x ‘Iolanthe’)

Plus Ruby Tuesday, Dawn Light and Ab Fab

Fairy Magnolia® Blush (M. laevifolia x foggii hybrid)

Fairy Magnolia® Cream (M. laevifolia x foggii hybrid)

Fairy Magnolia® White (M. laevifolia x doltsopa)

Fairy Magnolia® Lime (on very limited release in Europe only)

Plus Fairy Magnolia® Petite Peach

New Jury Magnolias

Lead photo: Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™

It can take a long time for a new plant from Mark’s breeding programme to reach the point of sale on the market. We have long since moved on to looking at more recent plants but it is a thrill when the time comes to seeing the plants finally released commercially into the wider world.

It was different when we had the nursery and we would release new plants onto the domestic market. There could be a quick turnaround on those. Nowadays, we focus internationally and that is a very different ball game. It has become increasingly difficult and eyewateringly expensive to get new plants into other countries, through quarantine, trialled and then built up commercially for release. Aside from controlling the initial selection and supply of plant material for propagation, everything is done by our Australian-based agents these days – Anthony Tesselaar Plants – and for this we are truly grateful because it is a plant mission.

This year heralds the start of a new round of plant releases – three new deciduous magnolias and the next evergreen in the Fairy Magnolia® series – but not simultaneously.

First up, there will be a limited release this year in Aotearoa New Zealand of the three deciduous magnolias, 2026 for Australia and then or soon after for Europe. Don’t even ask about USA – a work in progress there but likely to be longer.

Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ will the last of the Jury red magnolias to be named and released. It all started with Felix’s ‘Vulcan’, a breakthrough that has well and truly stood the test of time. Mark followed up with ‘Black Tulip’, ‘Burgundy Star’ and ‘Felix Jury’ – the latter varying in colour from deep red to rosy pink, depending on growing conditions. ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’ in particular have become influential in international magnolia breeding. I see many photos of plants that have one or other of them in their parentage. I may be biased but I don’t see many that are an improvement on their parent.

Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ – the original plant is a stand out in our park but small enough to fit in most domestic gardens.

It seems fitting that we end the Jury reds with Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ because we regard it as a significant upgrade on ‘Vulcan’. It has all the desirable characteristics of ‘Vulcan’ – rich colour, smaller tree, flowering from a young age and very floriferous. But better. It loses the less desirable aspects of ‘Vulcan’. It blooms a little later in the season which is better for colder climates; it has a long flowering season and the later season flowers are as good as the earlier ones (which is not always the case with magnolias). But best of all, it has lost the purple undertones that were the main problem with ‘Vulcan’ – especially as the season progressed when the brilliant early blooms could give way to smaller flowers which tended to be rather murky and paler in colour. ‘Ruby Tuesday’ stays the same clear red from start to finish. We describe it as ‘garden friendly’ which means it is a suitable size for smaller, domestic gardens – still a tree but a smaller specimen. We are very proud of it.

Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ and yes, I do think it is pretty fabulous

Second up is Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™, the only white magnolia Mark has named. His initial code name has stuck – it is named primarily for me with a nod to Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley and I feel in excellent company there. It has a huge white bloom with just a touch of pink at the petal base and we do like big flowers on our magnolias here. So, in flower size, it sits alongside Felix’s ‘Atlas’ and Mark’s ‘Felix Jury’. I was amused to be sent a photograph of it flowering in a European nursery – in Germany, from memory – of a bare stick about 1.5 metres high adorned with several excessively large white blooms. It looked impressive but is even more impressive on the original plant. It is a larger growing tree and we worried for a while that it may be too large but growth rates and size are heavily determined by climate and most magnolias around the world are grown in harder conditions than we ever get here so it is unlikely to reach the same stature that we see.

The habit of growth on Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ is tall but slender

We have really struggled with naming the third one. In the end, I crowd-sourced a name on the social media platform, Bluesky. Out of hundreds of suggestions, we came up with a short list of of nine good names and I think we have settled on Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™. Our problem came with trying to nail down the colour. Depending on light conditions, it is somewhere between rich pink and purple. I lined up petals alongside Magnolia campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’, one of the purplest of the species and the petals of the hybrid were darker but it doesn’t always look that way on the tree. It is not blue enough to be able to say it is purple, lilac or lavender, not brown enough to be puce, but possibly too many blue hues to be rich pink. Hence ‘Dawn Light’™. Whatever the colour, it is lovely and has been a consistent performer in a prominent position here year on year. It is another taller, upright grower – rather than spreading – but is not likely to be as tall in different climates.

This is why we had such trouble naming Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ – it can look purple or pink, depending on the light

I once lined up petals to try and determine the colour. That is Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ at the top, ‘Dawn Light’ below but it can still look too pink on the tree. Mark quipped that he wanted to call it Purple Haze – to go with Ruby Tuesday, you understand. Showing our era, I wondered whether ‘Ab Fab’ should therefore be named A Whiter Shade of Pale.

These three cultivars have been under our watchful eye for years and we are confident on their merits. Magnolias are a long term plant. You don’t want to be casting a plant out after 5 or 10 years because something better comes along. We think these three will stand the test of time.

Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ and some very fine plants about to go on sale from Warners Nurseries in Victoria, Australia

Australia is as difficult to get through border control as Aotearoa NZ is so it has taken a long time for Mark’s Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ to be released there, even though it has been sold in this country, in Europe and the UK for some time. But at last it is ready for release in Australia this year.

However, Australia gets the first chance at Fairy Magnolia ‘Petite Peach’™ which will be released this year (2026 in NZ and 2026/27 in Europe). Sharp-eyed garden visitors may have spotted the two clipped, smaller pompoms at our gate. ‘Petite Peach’ has been well trialled down the years here. It is much more compact than the three Fairy Magnolias® already released, with smaller foliage and a mass of smaller blooms in peach shades. It is what we would describe as a ‘good garden plant’ – reliable, consistent, extremely healthy, able to fit into gardens of any size and pretty, rather than spectacular.

The two plants in the foreground are Petite Peach, over 20 years old now and clipped once a year. The front plant hadn’t been fully clipped on account of Mama Blackbird and her babies in the middle of the top knot.

Meantime, we are into the final year or maybe two of assessing what is likely to be the last tranche of Jury hybrids from this generation of the Jury family. It is likely there will be a couple more deciduous magnolias but yellow this time, and maybe another three or four different colours in the ‘Fairy Magnolia’® series. But don’t hold your breath. These will be years off being released internationally. Plant breeding with the magnolia genus is definitely a long term project.

Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ resembling fluffy meringue, maybe

Postscript: For the magnolia aficionados who are going to ask about the breeding, these are largely from crossing hybrids but if you take it back to the originating species it works out to the following:

Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ M.soulangeana x ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta} x {M. liliiflora hybrid x ‘Lanarth’}. Which translates to 3/8 ‘Lanarth’, around 3/8 different forms of liliiflora with some sargentiana robusta and a few unknown genes to make the full quota.

Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ (M. soulangeana x ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta}) x M. x ‘Lennei alba’ (liliiflora genes again with some denudata) x {M.campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta}. Which makes the dominant genes liliiflora followed by ‘Lanarth’ and sargentiana robusta.

Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ (M. soulangeana X ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M.sargentiana robusta} x ‘Lanarth. So the dominant genes in this one are ‘Lanarth’ with lesser amounts of M. sargentiana robusta and M. liliiflora.

In layperson’s terms, Mark has continued using his father’s lucky break with the hybrid seedling he was sent which he named Magnolia ‘Mark Jury’ (back in the 1950s), crossing with the downstream Jury hybrids both he and Felix created, plus ‘Lanarth’.

The Yellow Magnolias

Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ with ‘Iolanthe’ behind

When the first yellow magnolia hybrids became available in New Zealand in the early to mid 1990s, they were a bit of a revelation. Most deciduous magnolias are from parts of central Asia and come in shades of pink, white, purple and hues through to red. Yellow seemed a significant addition and many people hadn’t realised that USA has its own deciduous magnolia and it flowers yellow. That is M. acuminata, sometimes referred to in its homelands as the cucumber tree.

It takes time to see how a magnolia will perform in a different climate. We knew that M. acuminata was very cold hardy, could grow very large (think 30 metres) and had small flowers. When you are looking at small nursery plants sporting their first yellow flowers, they can look exciting – something very different and new, to us at least. Given time, the picture becomes clearer and I quote Wikipedia: “Unlike most magnolias, the flowers are not showy. They are typically small, yellow-green, and borne high in the tree…”.

Magnolia ‘Yellow Fever’ on one of our road boundaries. I have never understood why anyone would choose that name

I remember talking to an American enthusiast about magnolias and it was a revelation as to different perceptions of plant hardiness. When we talked about hardiness in magnolias in our temperate climate, we measured things like vulnerability of the open flowers to frost or late storms. The timing of flowering mattered most to us. To the Americans, it was a matter of whether the bark split when the ground and trees froze in winter. That is next-level plant hardiness and they need plants that flower later in the season. Their yellow magnolia species is hardy in their winter cold.

One of the early yellow hybrids – probably ‘Yellow Fever’ – in the magnolia dell at Pukekura Park

And a close-up to show the problem of smaller flowers getting engulfed by new foliage. Most of the first batch of yellow selections flower even later so the flowers get hidden more.

The problem with most of the yellow hybrids in our temperate conditions is that the flowers come out late, at the same time as the leaves, and get lost in the foliage. The trees also grow extremely quickly and become large. The early hybrids came from Brooklyn Botanic Gardens In New York. We started with ‘Elizabeth’ (flowered early enough to beat the foliage but cream, not yellow and small flowers), ‘Yellow Bird’ (best yellow but flowered with its foliage and the small flowers became lost to view), ‘Yellow Fever’ (paler yellow but its main flowering came before the new foliage swamped them from sight and it still puts on a good display, despite its small flowers) and ‘Sundance’ (just another small, pale yellow in a similar mould). To those we added ‘Koban Dori’ (reputedly like a dwarf M. acuminata but the bright yellow flowers disappear behind the lush new foliage), ‘Eva Maria’ (novelty flower in a mix of pink, yellow and green that looks striking viewed close up but simply murky as a landscape tree – the same can be said of ‘Woodsman’) and ‘Hot Flash’ (which we rate as one of the better options because it is a good strong colour and it largely flowers on bare wood for us).

Poor old ‘Hot Flash’ never even got out of the nursery. It has long since rooted through from its pot but at least we get to admire it in a prominent spot beside the driveway to the neighbours.

In the years since those early hybrids, there has been an explosion of new selections internationally. The size of blooms has increased a bit but most keep that upward pointed shape and, in our conditions, most flower with their new foliage . Many magnolia specialists agree that too many yellow hybrids have been named. We stopped collecting more because Mark started hybridising his own and none of the overseas hybrids seemed to shout out to us as ‘must-haves’.

‘Honey Tulip’ on the left, ‘Hot Flash’ on the right

and ‘Honey Tulip’ on the left with ‘Sundance’ on the right

Mark’s ‘Honey Tulip’ is the only yellow he has named and he selected it for its cup shape – rounded petals, different to the more pointed shapes of other yellow hybrids – its reasonable flower size by yellow standards, smaller growth habit than the originating species and the fact that it flowers in abundance before the leaves appear. We have not regretted selecting it as it continues to go from strength to strength as the tree matures.

But ‘Honey Tulip’ was a step on the way. Mark would have preferred a clearer yellow and his quest has always been to see if he could reach a big flower – something the size of an ‘Iolanthe’ bloom – in clear yellow with the cup and saucer form. As we edge past the peak blooming season for the Asiatic magnolias in red, white and pink, his yellow seedlings are all starting to bloom. The dream of a big, proper yellow ‘Iolanthe’ type bloom will likely take another generation or two of plant breeding and, sadly, he may be running out of time. But there is enough amongst the seedlings to see that it is possible. He has reached the size, the colour and the flower form – just not all on the same plant yet!

We are flowering a lot of next generation ‘Honey Tulip’ controlled crosses and most are ending up looking very like their dominant parent. Good colour but not good enough to name.

And again – a good plant but not good enough to name when we already have one

‘Big Flop’, as Mark calls this one. Getting there on size and overall flower form but the upper petals flop and it is not a good enough colour

Good flower size and form but not there yet on colour – more cream than yellow

Getting closer but Mark hates the notched petals…

Good colour and flower size but the tree is growing way too large to even consider

Breeding magnolias is a numbers game, Mark will tell you. Amongst the several score of yellow seedlings, there are two that excite us. Neither are big yellow ‘Iolanthes’ but there is enough that is special about them to make us pick them as worth tracking for potential selection. I don’t share photos of ones that we think may be special, sorry. You only get to see them when we rule them out or when they are actually ready for release. In a world already overcrowded with yellow magnolia selections, we need to be very confident before we add one or two more.

Magnolia Diary 15 (but the first for 2012) August 26, 2012

It might as well be Felix, but it’s not

Baby Tulip – a small version of Black Tulip

Magnolia time. Many are surprised to hear that Felix Jury only ever named eight magnolias. Mark has only named and released three so far (with a fourth in the pipeline) despite raising and trialling hundreds. Why so few? We are picky. With the benefit of hindsight, we would probably have released only seven of Felix’s eight. Atlas was named for flower size but really is not up to the quality of the others in terms of long term performance.

We can do plenty of ring-ins, generic copies, slight improvements or variations. But while roses and camellias are like buses (there will be another one along in a few minutes), we see magnolias as being for the long haul. They are nowhere near as easily hiffed out and replaced and most people can only fit one or two into their garden. To name something new means it must be a breakthrough, a major improvement on what is already available. It takes years to trial and select a new magnolia and we like to be very confident with our releases. We took another walk around this afternoon, looking at the lookalikes. At this early to mid season stage, it is still the stronger colours that dominate. I will update as the pales and whites come into full bloom.