DECIDUOUS TREES. 



376 



Fig. ii6. 



The Chinese White Magnolia. M. conspicua. — A beautiful 

 small tree when in congenial soil, but quite often of scanty foliage in 

 northern grounds. Its peculiar quality is the 

 earliness of its great white blossoms, which 

 appear in April before the leaves, and, ac- 

 cording to Meehan, " combine the fragrance 

 of the lily with the beauty of the rose." 

 Yet the rose and the lily have this great 

 advantage : — that their blossoms are nestled 

 or environed in green leaves, while the 

 blossoms of this magnolia appear in daring 

 nakedness on the bare twigs of April. On 

 warm spring days the appearance of such 

 noble fragrant flowers is like a breath of 

 the tropics after one has passed an iceberg 

 at sea ; but when, after being invited to 

 burst their buds, and expand by the first 



warm days of spring, they are often startled and chilled by the 

 still whiter snows that occasionally fall in April, and seen from the 

 •windows of a fire-warmed room when chilly east winds drive all 

 one's nature-loving fever back to the heart, instead of admiration 

 they then inspire a kind of pity, and our kindliest wish is that they 

 might be back in their warmer homes, where no snows could pale 

 their whiteness, nor chilly winds drink their fragrance. In short, 

 there is something unnatural in the sight of blossoms unsurrounded 

 with the tender green of opening or expanded leaves; and although 

 we cannot but admire and be grateful for such bloom as the 

 Chinese white magnolia gives us, we are not disposed to consider 

 this pre-maturity of its blossoms as a desirable quality of trees or 

 shrubs, and would value this one higher if the blossoms were to 

 appear after, instead of before the expansion of the leaves. 



Figure ii6 shows the characteristic form of the tree five or six 

 years after planting, and the form of the leaves and blossoms. It 

 becomes a neat small tree from ten to fifteen feet in height. The 

 flowers are from three to four inches in diameter, and .appear- in 

 March, April, or May, according to the season or the latitude. 



This species, when grown as a .tree, is. usually grafted on the 



