Magnolia fraseri is a species of Magnolia

Magnolia

Magnolia is a large genus of about 210 flowering plant species in the subfamily Magnolioideae of the family Magnoliaceae. It is named after French botanist Pierre Magnol....

native to the southeastern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in the southern Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

 and adjacent Atlantic

Atlantic Coastal Plain

The Atlantic coastal plain has both low elevation and low relief, but it is also a relatively flat landform extending from the New York Bight southward to a Georgia/Florida section of the Eastern Continental Divide, which demarcates the plain from the ACF River Basin in the Gulf Coastal Plain to...

 and Gulf

Gulf Coastal Plain

The Gulf Coastal Plain extends around the Gulf of Mexico in the Southern United States and eastern Mexico.The plain reaches from the western Florida Panhandle, the southwestern two thirds of Alabama, over most of Mississippi, some of western Tennessee and Kentucky, southwest Arkansas, the Florida...

 Coastal Plain from West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

 south to northern Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and west to eastern Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

. The Appalachian plants are classified as Magnolia fraseri var. fraseri, and the more coastal plants as M. fraseri var. pyramidata. These two kinds of magnolia are often recognized as distinct species, M. fraseri and M. pyramidata, respectively.

Fraser magnolia is a small, deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

 growing to 14 m (40 ft) tall, as a basal-branching, fragrant plant, with brown bark

Bark

Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...

 with a "warty" or "scaly" texture. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are quite large, 15–25 cm (rarely up to 53 cm) long and 8–18 cm (rarely up to 29 cm) broad, with a pair of auricles

Leaf shape

In botany, leaf shape is characterised with the following terms :* Acicular : Slender and pointed, needle-like* Acuminate : Tapering to a long point...

 (or "ear-lobes") at the base and an entire margin; they are green above and glaucous blue-green below. The showy white flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are 16–25 cm in diameter with nine tepal

Tepal

Tepals are elements of the perianth, or outer part of a flower, which include the petals or sepals. The term tepal is more often applied specifically when all segments of the perianth are of similar shape and color, or undifferentiated, which is called perigone...

s; they open in late spring or early summer, after the foliage. The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is a woody, oblong, cone-like structure (like all Magnolias) 6.5–12 cm long, covered in small, pod-like follicles each containing one or two red seeds that hang out from the cone by a slender thread when ripe. A good seed crop occurs only about every 4-5 years. Reproduction is accomplished by both seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

 and vegetative sprouts

Vegetative reproduction

Vegetative reproduction is a form of asexual reproduction in plants. It is a process by which new individuals arise without production of seeds or spores...

. The fruit is eaten by wildlife, helping disperse the seeds.

This tree grows best on rich, moist, well-drained soil. The very large showy white flowers and large-leaved, coarse-textured foliage make this an attractive ornamental tree

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

, but otherwise it has little commercial value. It is sometimes cultivated in North America as a native alternative to exotic magnolias, and can be grown a considerable distance north of its natural range if given conditions favorable to its growth.

There are two varieties:

• Magnolia fraseri var. fraseri, native to the Appalachian Mountains.
• Magnolia fraseri var. pyramidata (Bartram) Pampanini, from the Coastal Plain
  Coastal plain
  A coastal plain is an area of flat, low-lying land adjacent to a seacoast and separated from the interior by other features. One of the world's longest coastal plains is located in eastern South America. The southwestern coastal plain of North America is notable for its species diversity...
  
  . The vernacular name for this variety is Pyramid magnolia.

The bigleaf magnolia

Bigleaf magnolia

Magnolia macrophylla, the bigleaf magnolia, is a deciduous magnolia native to the southeastern United States and eastern Mexico. This species boasts the largest simple leaf and single flower of any native plant in North America.-Classification:...

 (Magnolia macrophylla) also has auriculate-lobed leaves.

Fraser Magnolia is named for the Scottish botanist John Fraser

John Fraser (botanist)

John Fraser was a Scottish botanist, born at Tomnacross, the Aird, Inverness-shire. He moved to London, where he started work as a draper working with linen, but then, together with his son, took up botanical collecting, sending his collections to his plant nursery in London and to other clients,...

(1750–1811), who collected extensively in the Appalachian Mountains.

External link/references

• http://wildwnc.org/trees/Magnolia_fraseri.html (wildwnc.org)
• Photos of flowers and foliage
• Magnolia fraseri images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
• Interactive Distribution Map of Magnolia fraseri