Tag Archives: Magnolia Vulcan

Tikorangi Notes: June 19, 2011

Spring Festival is one of the prettiest in flower this week though spring is still a way off here

Spring Festival is one of the prettiest in flower this week though spring is still a way off here

Tikorangi Notes: Sunday June 19, 2011

Our mild autumn continues though technically we are now well into winter. It may be wet but it is not generally cold. The ski fields inland and south seem to be getting nervous (and I am wondering whether the Christmas gift of a season lift pass to our snowboarding son was badly timed for the one season in a decade when the snows will be patchy and unpredictable) but it does mean that we are enjoying great gardening conditions. Except for last Friday which was cold (calm but cloudy and cold), daytime temperatures remain in the late teens and night temperatures are not dropping much below 10 degrees Celsius.

Lachenalia bulbifera, naturalised beneath a large pine tree

Lachenalia bulbifera, naturalised beneath a large pine tree

Magnolia Vulcan is opening its first blooms on the various plants we have around the property. Mid June is early. We usually expect peak flowering later in July. A hail storm last night damaged those early buds and blooms but there are plenty more to come which will be undamaged. The early lachenalias are open – red L. bulbifera, the yellow of Mark’s L. reflexa hybrids and the common L. aloides. The first of the snowdrops are in flower. We never get snow here but Galanthus S Arnott is wonderfully successful on our climate and there are few plants as pretty as the simple snowdrops. The sasanqua camellias are passing over and the japonicas and hybrids are taking over. Spring Festival is particularly pretty this week. With petal blight already hitting before many varieties have even opened, it is probably time to be a little more meticulous in recording which varieties show less damage and still put on a good show. Petal blight is probably here to stay. It will take breeding and selection to find a way past the ravages.

Just one new post this week – our Tikorangi Diary which records Mark’s unsuccessful efforts so far to extract olive oil with a zero carbon footprint and plans for our designated Citrus Grove.

We have been discussing our citrus trees here – somewhere around 20 different specimens which are very well established (as in some are probably around 50 years old now) and I have plans for a series of posts on growing fruit trees and the aim for self sufficiency and variety and how realistic this is in our climate.

The first blooms on Magnolia Vulcan were hit by hailstones last night

The first blooms on Magnolia Vulcan were hit by hailstones last night

Magnolia diary the first, 9 August 2009

Click to see all Magnolia diary entries

Click on the Magnolia diary logo above to see all diary entries

On August 9, 2009, it would be fair to say that we are a week or two late starting a magnolia diary. M.campbellii is already in full flower down in our park. Our tree dates back to the mid 1950s and is one of the oldest magnolias we have here. It is set in front of distant Mount Taranaki, our near perfect iconic volcanic cone and the reason why the movie, The Last Samurai, was filmed locally. It is cheaper to film here than in Japan and our mountain is a reasonable ring-in for Mount Fuji (I have even encountered a film crew shooting a Japanese car commercial down our road!) In New Zealand, campbellii is the first to flower and at times it can be a close run thing to see if the leaves fall before the flowers open.

M.campbellii and Mount Taranaki at Tikorangi

M.campbellii with Mount Taranaki beyond at Tikorangi The Jury Garden, Taranaki New Zealand.

Magnolia Vulcan is opening its flowers. The tree in our carpark has maybe a dozen early flowers open but it is clearly warmer down the driveway where a Vulcan tree has many more flowers. The original tree, bred by Felix Jury, is in the neighbour’s property (formerly the Jury farm) and we no longer have access to monitor it. Vulcan was a true colour break in its day and opens remarkable wine coloured flowers in NZ and in Australia. However it is patchy at best in Europe and inclined to be disappointing in the UK. We rate it as a small tree here. The first flowers are always the deepest colour and the largest in size.

Early season flowers on Vulcan in our carpark

Early season flowers on Vulcan

The original Lanarth in our park is a week into opening though not quite at its peak yet. It shows blooms in that beautiful, intense stained glass purple but also pale flowers at the same time. This tree dates back to the mid fifties and it took three attempts to import and successfully establish the genuine article. One of the early attempts, however, yielded up the Lanarth seedling subsequently named Mark Jury, which became the secret weapon in the early magnolia breeding programme here. Mark is not yet showing colour.

Lanarth

Lanarth

Magnolia Black Tulip in warmer positions on our property has opened its first flowers but the original tree has yet to show colour. We have the very first flower on Felix Jury opening. Along with M. campbellii, our reds are the earliest of the season.

Our winter this year has been colder than usual (visible frost on a number of occasions although we rarely drop below zero degrees celsius at night), drier than usual, not very windy but with our usual high winter light levels.