The starting gun is the tree in front of the house, its flowers beginning dark purple, opening to show their white insides. Judy dates her paintings, so I know it’s early this year, just shedding their furry bracts, the prompt to get down to Kew to visit its relations. It is not a big collection there (nor is that of flowering cherries) but it includes the splendid Magnolia campbellii and its hybrid – Kew-bred I believe – M. x veitchii. This is the one I should have planted at Saling Hall in large numbers, fifty years ago. Its smooth swollen limbs embody health and vigour. What a grove that would be today.
Some say that no hybrid ever has the pure beauty – perhaps class is a better word – of the God-created species. There is evidence for this view here at Kew, right next to the crowded clusters of grey trunks of the veitchiis grows a tall, decidedly elegant tree, Magnolia denudata, the Chinese Yulan, dressed with wide flowers hesitating between white and cream. It was the first Chinese magnolia to reach Europe in the 18th century and remains among the best.
