GardenBanter.co.uk - Magnolia soulangiana

On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 18:06:17 +0000, kiwi
wrote:

Could anyone advise me on this,i transplanted this magnolia in february
as we have mild winters here,it was 10 foot high and after a little
pruning we moved it to my new site.do i have to remove any of the
flowering buds or can i leave it.chris.

As nobody else has volunteered a reply, here's my ha'porth (but be
warned: I managed to kill one MS and nearly kill a second, a good many
years ago when I knew even less than I do now, if that's possible).

If you moved it last February and it's still alive (i.e. it survived
the summer), then I can't see any reason for removing the flower buds.

OTOH if you mean that you moved it this year, then I would prune it
quite heavily in anticipation of the summer. IIRC (and what killed
mine, see above), they don't like root disturbance on moving. By hard
pruning it you will limit the amount of leaf development, at least in
the early months of growth, and reduce the stress on the damaged
roots. Eventually, shoots will appear on the pruned branches, far more
than you need. Rub out most of them, leaving only those that you want
to grow on for a well-shaped tree.

But I've just noticed that you sign yourself Kiwi, which may mean
you're posting from NZ, so February is late summer. But that shouldn't
make any difference to my first reply above if you moved it last
February, as it will still have come through a year's growth in its
new site and will be reasonably well settled in by now. But if you
moved it this February, then it's got a winter to go through, when
growth won't be very much, before the spring and summer come next
September through December/January, in which case I think I'd be
inclined to prune it fairly hard now.

--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net