DECIDUOUS TREES. 
371 
The Umbrella Magnolia. M. tripetela .—A species that 
seems always in doubt whether to be a shrub or a tree. Fig. 114 
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. 
