Magnolia floribunda Seeds | Many-flowered Michelia
LATIN NAME: Magnolia floribunda
COMMON NAME: Many-Flowered Michelia, Floribunda Michelia
Plant Profile
Old-world magnolias of this kind bear cup-shaped, intensely fragrant flowers in the axils, each bud wrapped in a series of bracts, with no terminal flower ending the shoot. True Magnolia in the old sense puts its flower at the tip of the branch. That difference once justified a separate genus, and molecular work later showed that the axillary-flowered group nests inside Magnolia.
The tree is evergreen, with oval leaves that are glossy and leathery above and paler beneath, and it grows into a rounded crown that can reach the size of a modest forest tree. The flowers are crowded on the wood and open in succession over a long season, cream to pale yellow and strongly scented at dawn and dusk.
The fruit is an aggregate of follicles, each of which splits along one side to release its seeds. A seed does not simply drop: it hangs for a while on a slender elastic thread, the funiculus, with an aril around it that is bright red or orange and fleshy. The colour and the thread are an advertisement aimed at birds.
In the wild the species grows in evergreen broad-leaved forest on mountain slopes, in cool, humid air with summer rain and winter mist, frequently in the cloud belt where the leaves stay wet for much of the day. It wants deep, humus-rich soil and shelter from strong wind.
Grown for the flower rather than the fruit, this tree is at its best where its scent can reach a path or a window.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus is also a source of sesquiterpene lactones. One of them, micheliolide, a guaianolide first isolated from a close relative of this group, has attracted a large pharmacological literature on anti-inflammatory activity, and the family as a whole is rich in lignans of the magnolol and honokiol type. The wood and bark carry the aromatic oils that give the family its smell.
Uses & Benefits
The scent of the scented Michelia group is dominated by linalool and methyl benzoate, with benzyl acetate and phenylethyl alcohol rounding out the lighter notes. Between them they produce a fragrance that reads as fresh and slightly citrus-floral rather than heavy, which is why the flowers were once gathered in quantity for perfumery and for scenting oils and household preparations.
Growing from Seed
Clean the seed as soon as the follicles open, because the red aril ferments quickly and the seed behind it does not store. Rub the aril away, wash the seed and sow it at once in a mix of two parts compost, one part coarse sand and one part perlite, covering it to about its own depth. Keep the tray moist and shaded, and let it stay cool.
Give the young plants filtered light rather than full sun for their first season, since their leaves scorch easily. Move each seedling into a deep pot once it holds two or three true leaves, keeping the root straight and undisturbed. Plant out at the start of the wet season, in a hole wider than the root ball, and water through the first dry summer.
Prune lightly after flowering to keep a shapely crown, and avoid heavy cuts into old wood, which heal slowly. Feed with an acid-tolerant fertiliser in spring and mulch with leaf mould. In a cold garden, site the tree against a warm wall and wrap the young trunk for its first winters.
Scale insects gather on the undersides of the leathery leaves, and stem borers work into young trunks where a pruning cut has left a wound; keep the cuts clean and remove affected branches. Leaf spot and sooty mould appear in still, humid air, so thin the crown enough to let the breeze through it.
Our Take
Anyone who grows this tree is really growing it for the evening air. For a scented collection, plant it near champaca, the golden-flowered relative whose perfume built an attar industry, and near Michelia figo, the small shrub whose flowers smell of ripe fruit. Michelia yunnanensis is the compact option for a courtyard.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Many-Flowered Michelia often pair it with these related subjects: