DECIDUOUS TREES. 



371 



FIG. 114. 



THE UMBRELLA MAGNOLIA. M. tripetda. A species that 

 seems always in doubt whether to be a shrub or a tree. Fig. 1 14 

 shows, not its most common, but its best form, at about ten years 

 of age. It grows rapidly to a huge bush or small tree thirty feet 

 in height. If allowed to send up shoots at will, it is pretty sure to 

 have half a dozen rival stems, and then it is an ungainly great- 

 leaved, and great-blossomed bush. By using care, however, in the 

 selection of a stocky low tree from the 

 nursery, encouraging it to branch low, 

 and not allowing any suckers to spring 

 from near the ground, it can be forced to 

 make the pretty tree-form shown in our 

 cut, though this is not as low-branched as 

 it is desirable to make them. 



The leaves are of great size, often from 

 eighteen inches to two feet long on young 

 trees, and seven or eight inches broad, 

 oval, and pointed at both ends. They are 

 disposed to grow in tufts at the extremi- 

 ties of the limbs, so that the interior 

 branches are bare. This peculiarity sug- 

 gested the name of Umbrella Magnolia ; 

 but the general form of the tree is such as to make the title utterly 

 inappropriate ; but it is now too well established to change. 



In the latitude of New York this tree is generally in bloom 

 from May to July, and isolated blossoms occasionally appear 

 throughout the season; the flowers are white, from six to eight 

 inches in diameter, cup-shaped, and have an unpleasant odor. 

 The fruit is conical, five or six inches long, of a beautiful pink 

 color, forming quite an ornamental feature of the tree. 



Loudon says of this tree: "In Britain the tree sends up 

 various shoots from the root to replace the stems, which are seldom 

 of long duration." This is also its peculiarity in this country. 

 Though it has been more generally planted than any other half- 

 hardy magnolia, it is in all respects inferior to the Magnolia machro- 

 phylla, which it most nearly resembles ; and to the M. cordata and 

 the M. soulangeana, from which it differs widely. 



