Only "mostly dead"

Just several weeks ago, creamy pink and white blossoms were dancing on the branches of the magnolia trees, turning the canopies into cotton-candy clouds. It was heavenly, until temperatures on two consecutive nights dropped below freezing. I could hardly bear to look at the now-brown, lifeless flowers, their petals drooping—what magnolias might look like if Salvador Dali had ever decided to paint them.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this. It’s touch and go every spring for magnolia trees in the Delaware Valley. A game of chance. These trees bloom here in early April, yet a killing frost can occur until the very end of the month and even into early May. I always worry: will the blossoms escape a freeze this year?

I fell in love with magnolias as a little girl, enchanted by their smooth gray bark, their intricate branching patterns—like something out of a Chinese landscape painting—and the spring profusion of elegant blossoms with the most delicious fragrance.

A large beauty of a magnolia grew in a yard across the street from ours. The entire property was magical to me with banks of azaleas, beds of spring-flowering bulbs, and a wooden railing above a low area that created the feeling of a dry creek-bed. The elderly couple who lived there sensed my love of plants and kindly let me wander around whenever I wished.

Today I’m aware that perhaps part of the appeal of magnolia trees for me is their fragility and vulnerability. I metaphorically hold my breath every year wondering how they will fare. They’re like us, aren’t they, often impacted by things beyond their control?

But the most amazing thing happened this year. The magnolias that had been hit the hardest—the ones I was averting my eyes from so as not to have to glimpse the sickly, rotted color of all the dead blossoms—were looking surprisingly pink again. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing; in the decades that I’ve lived here, this is the first time such a thing has happened.

It wasn’t that the dead flowers had disappeared; there were plenty of lifeless flowers still morbidly hanging on. But close inspection revealed that there were some flowers that had been only partially damaged by the cold—that were only “mostly dead”—and others that looked fresh and new. I surmised that the buds hadn’t all opened at the same time, leaving many to emerge after those nighttime freeze events.

What I witnessed is a reminder to me that despite the vulnerability of their flowers, magnolias—one of the first species of flowering plants—are survivors. Estimates put their arrival at approximately 95 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. They’ve obviously seen a lot of tough times.

Right now, when things in our country are in such a state of disarray and unpredictability, the persistence of the magnolias provide a good lesson for me. Sure, there are seasons when their flowers die prematurely, but the trees have deep roots and thick bark; they can survive some knocks. Death of the flowers is not death for the trees themselves. Rooted and grounded, they’ll continue to do what they know to do—set their buds, hold them close over the winter, and open to the possibility of spring.

Note: Have you ever wondered where plants get their names? Magnolias were named for Pierre Magnol, a 17th century French botanist who worked on classifying plants. He was the first to publish the concept of plant families.