DECIDUOUS TREES. 
375 
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 116 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 
Fig. 116. 
