Magnolia Cleopatra

Cleopatra flowers deep pink to wine purple, the colour strongest on the outside of the petals, in big tulip shaped blooms carried on bare branches in late winter and early spring. Colour that saturated reads from the far end of a garden, which is the point of the plant. It also begins flowering while still young, so a small pot is not a decade long wait, and the habit stays upright rather than sprawling sideways.

Wind ends the display, not frost

The flowers are large, soft and carried with no leaf cover at all. An exposed corner, a windy fence line, or a gap between two buildings that funnels the breeze will shred and brown the petals within two or three days of them opening, and there is no second flush, so a whole season comes and goes in a week. That is the usual reason people are disappointed by a deciduous magnolia here, and it is a siting problem rather than a growing one. Put a building, a hedge or an established shrub group between the tree and the prevailing wind, and give it morning sun. A hard late frost on open blooms will brown them too, but on most Australian sites the wind gets there first.

Where it belongs

Districts with a real winter: cool temperate and highland gardens through the south east, the tablelands and the cooler parts of the south west. In warm subtropical gardens the flowering is lighter and less reliable. Full sun to part shade, free draining soil improved with compost and sitting slightly acid, and a mulched surface rather than a cultivated bed. Keep water up through the first two summers, hold mulch back from the trunk, and plant in autumn or at the very start of spring. On an open site, stake a young leader for a season or two, as much to stop the root ball rocking as to hold it straight.

Buy the shape you want

Deciduous magnolias are slow to shoot from old wood, so hard reshaping is a permanent loss rather than a setback. Choose a plant that already has the framework you want and keep cutting to dead, damaged or crossing wood in the few weeks after flowering. Later than that and you are removing the buds set over summer for the following spring. Feed as the buds swell in late winter and again after flowering with a fertiliser blended for acid loving plants, and mulch each year with composted bark, clear of the trunk.

Cleopatra against the paler types

Cameo is the soft alternative with much the same flowering habit, and the choice is entirely about colour and background: Cleopatra for contrast against a light wall, Cameo for something quieter. If white is what you want, Yulan carries upright white goblets with a light lemon scent on a broad rounded tree that needs noticeably more room. Cleopatra is the pick where space is limited, the colour has to carry, and you want flowers within the first few seasons. All three are stocked among the deciduous feature trees, and the decision runs colour first, then the width the site can give.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 6 sizes, from 250mm up to Bare Root Regular, priced from $71.95 to $289.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Every size here is established stock rather than a starter plant, so this line is intended for immediate effect rather than for growing on. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to choosing a magnolia.