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The Progression of Oyama Magnolia's Spring & Summer Buds & BlossomsThe Oyama Magnolia begins its long flowering period in May. The individual buds are not long-lasting & go through several rapid changes. But it doesn't bloom all at one time, so there are new buds opening daily for a whole month, plus the occasional vagrant bloom later still. |
Below, you can follow the progression
of the buds into flowers.
Fig. 1: The May buds begin upright & green, from the center of the Oyama's hand-sized leaves.
Fig. 2: The outer layer of the green buds soon darken to papery brown as the petals swell up within, then "split" the paper wrapper so that it looks like it is wearing a little brown hat. The initially upright buds have by now goose-necked downward.
Fig. 3: Momentarily the brown hat falls to the ground, revealing an entirely snow-white bud, as seen in this rainy-day portrait.
Fig. 4: The white buds swiftly open into a full cup-shaped bloom hanging downward. If you look up into the cups you see it has bright red stamins surrounding the green fruit. Since our Oyama is quite a bit taller than we are, we can stand under the limbs & look upward into the red hearts.
Fig. 5: The white petals soon turn a cafe-latte-brown which are easily knocked free, revealing the stamin-wrapped green fruit. Within the day the red stamins will fall off, or they will have fallen off at the same time as the browned flower petals. But that green fruit will cling to the branches all summer long. This fruit will turn bright red in autumn, then burst open with bright orange seeds, leaving behind a woody blackening winter husk. Go to the Oyama Autumn Seed Pod Page for some photos of the bright pods.
