Bursting With Color


Trees of Tulips and Roses Usher in the Season


Iris Watson
Photo Courtesy of Conrad Pyle Co.

Ugly. Gloomy. Blustery. Inclement. Ominous. Gray. All of these words we have used at one time or another to describe the weather that comes our way in January and February. Whoops—let us not forget weird and unusual. Just as often, they describe our moods as well, but that can all change in a heartbeat when we take a walk or ride around our wonderful little town this month.
    From January into March, Alameda bursts into flower with some of the most spectacular flowering trees in the Bay Area. I’m talking about those enormous tulip-shaped blooms in shades of pink to lavender to rosy red that cling to bare branches in such quantities that they leave you breathless. I’m talking about our magnolias, specifically what is commonly referred to as saucer magnolia or tulip magnolia. Unlike their beautiful cousin, the huge Southern magnolia that keeps those large glossy, leathery leaves all year round, the Magnolia soulangeana is a deciduous tree and therefore more striking as those killer blossoms have center stage all to themselves.
    While the most common varieties have pink/rose/mauve flowers, some of the newer introductions have a greatly expanded palette, most notably the yellow varieties. All produce stunningly large blooms—as large as 10 to 12 inches across. Here are a few that might strike your fancy:
BUTTERFLIES: An upright grower that is taller than wide (20 by 12 at maturity) producing dark true-yellow flowers. The buds are tall and pointed upright just like a tulip and mildly fragrant. Excellent bloom vigor.
YELLOW FEVER: A relatively small tree, about 15 feet tall and 8 feet across. Its blossoms are a creamy yellow and
mildly fragrant.
YELLOW BIRD: A heavy bloomer with light yellow/creamy yellow blossoms that grows to 30 feet tall and almost as wide. Beautiful in the moonlight.
ATHENE: Bears heavy-textured flowers 1 inch to 10 inches across, with a lemony to somewhat licorice-like fragrance. The outer petals curl outward with the inner petals upright, giving a cup and saucer effect. The petals are violet mauve at the base, shading to pale pink and almost pure white inside. Grows to 20 feet to 25 feet with a vigorous upright effect.
APOLLO: Deep rosy-violet buds open to spicily fragrant, heavy-textured flowers that can grow up to 12 inches across. The overall effect is that of a huge, luminous mauve pink flower with darker highlights.
VULCAN: A stunning hybrid that grows 15 feet to 20 feet tall and almost as wide. Big and bold, the flowers are almost a foot across, and the foliage big, bold and a bright bitter green. The color, both inside and out, is officially described as “ruby red,” though it’s more like deep plum. The showiest of all the magnolias.
    All magnolias prefer full to part sun. In Alameda this means all-day sun, or at least full afternoon sun. They love rich, moist, slightly acid soil with regular irrigation, and it helps to mulch the soil to keep the roots shaded.
    My experience is that they usually have multi-trunks, with the branches starting rather low, which makes them usually impractical as a tree to walk under; but you may get lucky and find one that is branched high enough for that purpose. One of my favorite examples is standing in the front lawn of a beautiful home on Grand Street between Clinton and San Jose. Each year I drive out of my way to savor its beauty in full flower.
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    This wouldn’t be January without a few words about roses. After all, this is the perfect month to choose this most popular of all flowers. Mind you, there are roses and roses, and I could fill pages; however, limited by space, I want to talk to you about certain styles of roses. Most specifically, rose trees.
    For more years than I can remember, nurseries could only offer three styles of roses—shrubs, climbers and 36-inch trees. That has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, and now we have some amazingly versatile and interesting landscape styles. My very favorites are the tree roses. Shaped like your typical tree with a single stem and then the head, these come in 18-, 24-, 36-, 48- and 60-inch trunks. This opens up whole new vistas for your landscape. The 48-inch and 60-inch trees are grafted at the top with a type of shrub that weeps; this means branches that can drape and trail down to 4 feet or 5 feet and are covered with gorgeous flowers all spring into winter. The possibilities are exciting. Now we are no longer limited to lines of little soldiers marching up the front walk. We can have a blaze of color rising up out of the middle of the border to float above smaller plants, or even groupings of three different heights in three different colors.
    I have a gazillion other ideas on how to play with roses, but since space is obviously limited here, I invite you to attend one of my four free classes on rose care and culture that I do each winter at the nursery. I will do one in January, two in February and one in March, on various Saturday mornings.  I will show you how to prune, plant, fertilize and choose the best rose for your garden.

THE AUTHOR and her husband, John, own Thomsen’s Garden Center & Vines, 1113 Lincoln Ave. She’s on “Playing in the Dirt” 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays on Comcast Channel 28.