A shrub or slender tree, 4 to 30 feet high, with light brown bark. The recent shoots are a bright green, and like the buds they have a tendency towards downiness. Alternate leaf-scars.
This magnolia is found growing more or less commonly in swamps from New Jersey to Florida, but it is rare in the north. Over a hundred years ago it was discovered growing wild in Essex County, Massachusetts, by a minister of Ipswich, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, and it is still found in the swamps near Gloucester. It is a low shrub in the north, but in the south it grows to be a slender tree. The wood which is soft and light is occasionally used in the south for making broom handles. The roots of the swamp magnolia are very fleshy, and they used to be eaten by beavers. The early settlers in Pennsylvania called it the “beaver tree” and baited their traps to catch beavers with pieces of the roots.
The name was given to the genus in honor of Pierre Magnol, a professor of botany at Montpellier in the seventeenth century, the specific name, glauca (glaucous) refers to the bloom on the under side of the leaves.
The umbrella tree (Magnolia tripetala) is found much more commonly in parks and gardens than our native swamp magnolia, and it seems a better representative of the genus for illustration. In the south it grows to be thirty or forty feet high. The bark is light gray in color and covered with small, blister-like excrescences. The branches are stout, and green in color turning to brown. The buds are large and smooth and covered with a purplish, glaucous bloom, and the leaf-scars are clearly defined. This magnolia grows in deep, rich moist soil, and is nowhere common. It is more frequently cultivated than any of the other species.
The name, tripetala, was given to it by Linnæus, and refers to the three conspicuous sepals of the flowers. The English name alludes to the spreading umbrella-like arrangement of the leaves.
The cucumber tree (Magnolia acuminata), a large tree 50 to 90 feet high, grows wild in western New York and southward, and is often cultivated. Its leaf buds are silky. The specific name refers to the pointed apex of the leaves.
Tulip Tree Liriodendron tulipifera
A very large tree, 80 to 150 feet high, The bark is dark and smooth, with small shallow furrows. The twigs are light purplish brown, with a grayish bloom, and the leaf-scars are oval and alternate in arrangement. The terminal bud is covered by two stipules. There are stipule-scars on the stems. The fruit is a pointed, open, dry cone, often remaining on the trees through the winter.
The tulip tree is one of the largest and tallest trees in our American forests. It has long been admired for its beauty in the summer, and a study of its winter buds and stems discloses the fact that it is equally interesting and beautiful when its foliage has gone. The buds are peculiar in structure. Each leaf within the bud is protected by a pair of stipules, and in the spring, when the buds open, a leaf slowly uncurls from its two folded stipule coverings and another bud is seen beneath, wrapped in stipules. This bud unfolds and in its turn discloses another. The process is as fascinating to watch as the opening of Indian boxes one within another. This characteristic of the tulip tree in protecting its young leaves makes one associate a very human, maternal instinct with the tree; it seems of all others the most careful in protecting its young growth. Sir John Lubbock, in his work on “Buds and Stipules,” explains that the peculiar squared end of the tulip tree’s leaf is caused by the singular way it is folded in the bud.
