Number Three is Magnolia ‘Forrest’s Pink’
Forrest’s Pink Magnolia
Forrest’s Pink is new to our garden. I purchased it several years ago through the mail and it arrived as nothing more than a stick with several side branches. FP is coming along beautifully and I was thrilled when last fall its very first bud had formed. Forrest’s Pink purportedly flowers slightly later, which is ideal for our predictably unpredictable New England spring. I also found very appealing its descriptions of delicious shell pink blooms, without a hint of purple. Although, what is most appealing is knowing that it’s parentage is that of the Lily Tree, or Yulan Magnolia (Magnolia denudata, synonomous with M. heptapetala)–the most dreamily scented of all the magnolias.
I was excited to show you a photo of its first flower but some devilish creature chewed the bud to the base of the tree. The bud had formed very low to the ground—perhaps it made a great bunny feast. The list of critters who eat magnolia flowers is long and includes snakes, deer, squirrels, moles, mice, and opossums. In China, the sweet citrus-scented flowers of the Lily Tree are pickled and used as a flavoring for rice. The lovely ornamental seed heads of many species of magnolias provide food for a wide range of birds. Hopefully by next year at this time we will have more than one bud to gaze upon and to photograph.
Newly developing seed head of Magnolia ‘Alexandrina’
Nearly the moment the fruits of our magnolia trees ripen, they are devoured by the Catbirds and Mockingbirds.
Image of Forrest’s Pink Magnolia courtesy Google image search
Good Morning Gloucester 
The stuff my brain collects over the years. All the really useful stuff falls out but I cannot look at your fruit of the magnolia without seeing a gynecium that is hypogynous. Magnoliaceae is one of the most “primitive” of flowering species and usually the first flower you dissect in angiosperm systematics or plant anatomy class. Not sure exactly what it means now but that gynecium is definitely hypogynous. 😉
And with that comment I will likely be connected years from now with an old botany major who googles hypogynous gynecium. (For a little more google help, UMass, Amherst, Botany Department, Morrill Hall, Oswald Tippo.)
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For Paul M–I’ve added hypogynous gynecium to the tags and now you most assuredly will be connected! Isn’t the fruit beautiful!! More photos to come, as the fruits mature. In Japan, the fruits of the Star magnolia are called “Seed of the Warrior Fist”–and it really does look like a clenched fist.
One of my very favorite professors at the Landscape Institute was Professor Kanchi Gandhi, who is an undergrad botany professor at Harvard and president of Rhodora. His classes were all at the Herbaria and I wished so much I could go there everyday all day and listen in on all his classes.
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