10 Great Ornamental Flowering Trees

This video is going to be 10 flowering trees and we're going to jump right in and talk about deciduous magnolias. We're down here at Panther Creek Nursery doing some filming this morning. It's a little south of Raleigh. They have just really amazing things as you'll see throughout this video. This is a deciduous magnolia. Some of them have girl names. You'll notice this one is called Jane. They tend to be ones that were picked because they bloom a couple of weeks later than the others. Most of our deciduous magnolias are, you know, as they flower, they typically flower a little too early and that makes them very vulnerable to frost. When the flowers are open, the flowers can tolerate basically zero frost. So these were selected to be fuller, more compact plants, just better over all ornamental plants and then on top of that, bloom a couple weeks later hoping that that will get you past that last frost. One nice thing about Jane that we almost always see and many of the girl named varieties is they'll repeat bloom. So we're here in June. We have one on the corner right by our street in Raleigh that probably has 50 to 60 flowers on it right now. Came down here to the nursery this morning, same thing is happening. These are fragrant flowers. They're very large. Again, there are lots of deciduous magnolias and some of them can become small trees. These you can keep probably in the 15 to 20 foot tall range and, you know, equal in width, something like that and then there are ones that get quite a bit taller. But it is amazing. It's one of those early signs of spring every year that you get to look forward to. Some of them have pretty good fall color. Again, you know, you need space for these. They need a lot of sun. You want to avoid southern exposure if you can on these because that is one thing that might trigger that flowering a little bit earlier. So think about your placement. Think about if you have the right place, you know, because that early season southern exposure will wake them up early and potentially have frost issues. You'll notice the outside of the flower bud on Jane is a medium kind of pink color. Some of the ones have slightly darker color, but when the actual flower opens, the inside of it is white. We'll see very frequently, I'll see Ann, Betty, Galaxy, Blushing Bell, quite a few named varieties that are, you know, I see all over the city of Raleigh and all of them are just great, sturdy, small ornamental trees. Number two on our ornamental flowering tree list is southern magnolias. And so the regular species southern magnolia is native to the southeast and gets 60 to 80 feet tall. We have named cultivars, named selections that will stay quite a bit smaller than that, that fit kind of ornamental landscapes. Although people do still, you know, purchase and buy some of the larger growing varieties. And again, they can get 60 to 80 feet tall. They get these massive white, you know, white fragrant flowers on them. Magnolias are one of the oldest, one of the oldest lineages of flowering plants on the planet. They've been around for a long, long time. There's lots and lots of different types of magnolias. We just saw again, we started this video with the deciduous magnolia that's native to, you know, to Asia. And here we are with one that's actually native, you know, we have them growing in our neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina in the wild. This variety right here is called Teddy Bear. It's an absolutely fantastic ornamental evergreen flowering tree. You know, most of this list is going to lose their leaves in the wintertime where this one is going to stay evergreen. This one was selected for its upright narrow habit, and you can see this in this container. Also, it really takes advantage of the brown backs on the leaves. So our, you know, our southern magnolias have these beautiful brown backs on the leaves. They have the shiny green foliage on the top like this, and then the underside is like this. So once they get some height on them, you start to see that contrast in the leaf color. And again, they'll flower mostly here from about mid-May. You know, we'll see some flowers on these right through almost the end of summer, and then they form kind of a modified cone that has a red seed inside of it. Really, you know, fantastic plants. They can be somewhat, you know, if you were to get a regular southern magnolia, they can be somewhat difficult to garden with. These giant leaves fall off of them and kind of mat down on the ground underneath them, and they're pretty, they're pretty tough on other things that try to get up close to them. But one of these smaller varieties like Little Jim or or, again, Teddy Bear right here are perfectly fine, and you can, you know, you can still garden around them. This is Chionanthus retusus, otherwise known as the Chinese fringe tree. We actually have a native fringe tree to the United States as well. Chinese fringe trees, typically, the normal Chinese fringe tree get quite wide, equally as wide as tall, so maybe 20, up to 20 by 20. Could be kept a little smaller than that, but they get quite wide. This is actually a named cultivar called Tokyo Tower. We have one of these in our back garden space because we're on a very small lot, and it's just kind of the perfect plant for that. So it's probably still going to reach that 20 feet in height, but be more like 10 feet in width instead. These flower in kind of middle spring, you know, most, a lot of these flowering trees can bloom very, very early. The deciduous magnolia at the beginning there, it's an example of that. The evergreen magnolia a little bit later. These are definitely going to be after our frost free date, which is good, but probably in that mid, I would say the first of May till about the first of June. Fragrant, very vivid white flowers. You definitely get a little, a little more vivid heavy flowering on the Chinese fringe tree than we do our native fringe tree. Native fringe tree is absolutely fantastic. If we run across one, we'll include it in the video here. These have, the Chinese fringe tree definitely has a slightly larger foliage, very, very nice foliage on this plant. And one other thing that I'll point out while Steph has the camera here is they have amazing exfoliating bark. This is one of the great characteristics of this tree is even in the winter time, you're going to see this really, really beautiful bark. And this is a young tree, so it really hasn't developed much of it yet, but it will as time goes on. And they also have very good fall color. Number four on the ornamental flowering tree list is one of my favorites. This is Styrax japonica. This is one of the best architectural trees. It has these very horizontal branching as it goes up, it forms this wonderful, they almost all end up with a really, really incredible shape. They can reach 20 or 30 feet in height. There are weeping forms, there are pink flowering forms, but the regular Styrax japonica is going to have a kind of pendulous cluster of white flowers on it that eventually forms a little seed, a little fruit that hangs on the rest of the season. It gets a kind of a pale yellow fall color. I love the stems are just a really, a really nice light gray color as well. Great foliage on these plants. And you can plant, this is one of those that I see, when I see them, there's a row of them on NC State's campus and there's, if you see six or eight of them in a row, they look like soldiers lined up. A lot of these, a lot of trees have minds of their own, but these tend to grow very uniform in habit. So if you wanted to put two or three of them together, they do look fantastic. They'll bloom. Again, this is another good one that typically blooms after our frost free date. So in my area, our average last frost dates right around the middle of April. These don't bloom until right at the beginning of May and they'll bloom. We're filming this in early June. So they just have finished up. They're blooming. Just ran across a named cultivar called snow cone. I actually have a video on the channel for this. I planted one of these at the old house and here we are well into June and this row is still blooming. This one very, very heavy flowering variety, slightly more upright in habit. So, you know, it might fit, you know, some lots a little better than a, you know, a wider form, but this, this was snow cone. Number five, crape myrtles. And if you watch my channel for any length of time, you might think I don't like crape myrtles. I grew tens of thousands of crape myrtles, maybe hundreds of thousands of crape myrtles over 20 years in the nursery business, rooting them for other people, growing them out into, you know, large, large ones like the one next to me. It's not that I've ever disliked crape myrtles really. It's just, they're pretty over-planted in our area. I mean, it's literally every lot has one. And so there's so many unique, interesting things out there. I just feel like sometimes, you know, maybe, maybe pick something different. You know, if you get an opportunity to, but with that said, there's a, there are a lot of reasons that people use crape myrtles. This is Natchez, which is a white flowering variety. Tends to be one of the earliest flowering and it's the most crape myrtle crape myrtle. That's what I'll call it. This is one of the National Arboretum introductions. Most of them that have Indian names are, are from the National Arboretum introductions. They were picked for powdery mildew resistance. You know, the old, the straight species crape myrtles that were originally brought to the States in the Southeast United States get powdery mildew terribly. So these were picked for mildew resistance. They were picked for exfoliating bark. So these are young, so we're not seeing that yet, but Natchez becomes this beautiful red smooth bark on it in the future. That's kind of modeled with some gray in it as well. Some peeling pieces on it as they really mature. Beautiful plant there. Some of them were selected for fall color for foliage color. Now during the season, we're seeing purple cultivars, you know, where purple foliage, red foliage, black foliage, crape myrtles, very long bloom times on these compared to a lot of other flowering trees. Some of the flowering trees we're showing you will bloom maybe three weeks and then, you know, they're kind of done where crape myrtles typically, I think we think they bloom almost much longer than they do. But that's because there's so many out there and some are blooming early like Natchez and then some are blooming very late and blooming right into the fall. So if you have a few different varieties typically, you can get a very, very long bloom time out of them from right here at the beginning of June right into fall. But again, you got long bloom time, great fall color, nice foliage, exfoliating bark, you know, I get it. You'll see some grown as standards or just single trunk trees, but most of the time you're going to see multi-trunks like on these Natchez right here. But again, a ton of variety and just cut whites and pinks and purples and lavenders and reds, you know, lots of variety out there. And again, not disliking crape myrtles, I just think sometimes there are probably some other choices maybe we could make. Next up on the small flowering trees list is this royal purple smokebush. There are a lot of different named varieties named cultivars. Royal purple holds its color really, really well, this purple foliage throughout the summer. They'll come out a much darker, kind of richer purple like this, and then they do fade to green over the course of the summer, especially, you know, further south. These are hardy in zone 4 to 8. They can get 15 or 20 feet in height ultimately, but can be kept much smaller than that. Ours is stretching a bit because it's in a little too much shade. I would prefer definitely having direct sun on it. It gets these kind of purpley, almost foam-like looking buds on them before they open to a little yellow flower. The flowers are quite showy, but this variety, more than the flowers, is really being grown for this incredible foliage color that you get all season long. They're great limbed up into small trees and you can underplant them with other colorful things. Again, the full sun is best. There are a lot of other named varieties, but I tend to see, especially here in the southeast, that royal purple kind of holds up the best throughout the summer. Next up on the small flowering tree list is amelanchier. This is actually what we've selected for our front garden at the house. This one is a native, flowers during the month of April and then forms a fruit that's very blueberry-like. In fact, if you've ever had one directly off the tree, they're almost sweeter than blueberries. Really amazing fruit on this plant. It has no shelf life, so it's never become, you know, it's not in grocery stores or anything like that. The birds, you're definitely going to fight the birds over them. This is a multi-trunk specimen and this is frequently what you're going to see with this variety called autumn brilliance. Probably the most common variety out on the market, but there are other named varieties of serviceberries. This one is multi-trunk. Again, you're frequently going to see this. Ours is a single standard one trunk at the house. It has really great foliage. The fruit's farming right now where they flowered from, you know, they flowered last month. Again, that's the fruit forming. It'll be the color and shape of a blueberry. You probably couldn't tell the difference if I put two in a bowl, honestly. The green foliage is beautiful and then in the fall, it turns a vivid red, kind of an orangey-red color, and it has just one of the best fall colors. This is a rose family member. They are susceptible to some disease problems. Another reason this one's selected is because it's disease resistant. Again, we went through a lot of native trees that we were potentially going to use in our garden and we ended up landing on autumn brilliance serviceberry. We covered Kynanthus retusus or the Chinese fringe tree earlier. This is Kynanthus progenicus. This is our native fringe tree. Also very, very showy white fragrant flowers in middle spring and it will form these clusters of fruit where the seed is inside. You can see the really, really nice foliage on these. If they're happy in the ground, they really do have great foliage. They have great fall color, kind of a yellowish fall color on these. Tend to stay a smaller than the Chinese fringe trees, maybe 12 to 15 feet by 12 to 15 feet, something like that. It's on the smaller side for these ornamental flowering trees, typically multi-trunked. So, if you just found this in the wild, you're probably just going to see a multi-trunked tree frequently in the trade. They'll be multi-trunked as well, but here in a nursery setting, they're in the process of making them all, you know, all standards, you know, single trunks like this. Have them do a little bit of work to keep them straight and keep them, you know, growing like this. So, you can buy them like this and more of a, you know, tree shape or again as a multi-trunk, but great, great plants. We have one in our neighborhood and we're so sad. It's been in the ground for a long, long time and the lot's been sold and it looks like it's going to be two lots and there's no way that tree is going to end up staying in that space, but Steph and I walk past it every spring, you know, when it's in flower and it's just absolutely beautiful. So, here we are at a red bud. This one is merlot. There are a lot of these purple foliage red buds in upright habits and weeping habits. Merlot happens to be a very good one. It holds its color very well, but I want to show you what happens on any of these kind of colorful red buds is they start out with whatever the brightest color is going to be and then as that comes off slowly, but surely up this branch, they do get greener and greener. So, you know, when we say purple foliage red buds, sometimes here in the south by mid-summer, they're just kind of a greenish purple at that point, but these, of course, red buds are fantastic. They're in the pea family. They have a little pea flower that happens along the stems. One of my favorite things about red buds is they'll bloom on even the oldest growth right up the entire trunk all the way to the top of the plant. This is a very good flowering variety. Some of the new ones, some of the more weeping ones, the more interesting ones, they flower but they don't seem to flower as heavily as are just some of the upright more vigorous growing or taller growing red buds. Of course, in the wild these are just, you know, green foliage with these beautiful heart-shaped leaves and then kind of a lavender pink flower on them and through plant breeding we've got purple foliage ones and gold foliage ones and now with flamethrower one that's gold and purple and red and yellow and green, you know, all on the same plant thanks to Denny Werner. So there's just all kinds of interesting forms, interesting shapes. One of our great natives, most everybody watching can grow them, you know, in some form or fashion. We have that golden falls weeping one in our back garden, but there are beautiful upright ones and if you have the space for them, you know, the spread is generally equal to the height on most red buds so you can expect to get, if you're getting, you know, 20 feet in height, you're going to get 20 feet in width and they're just kind of have, even the non-weeping ones end up with kind of a weeping open habit like that. One of our, you know, great native trees. Of course, there are tons of ornamental flowering trees out in the world and we made it, we're going to do some more detailed videos. We haven't covered a lot of trees on this channel in the six years I've had the channel in the thousand plus videos, you know, you could count on your hands how many of them were actually tree videos and so we're going to go more in depth on some of these groups of trees. This one's been more like, let's talk all about red buds in a three-minute piece, but we're going to do a more detailed red bud one and we're also definitely going to do a more detailed prunus one. You know, the cherries are, there's so many great flowering cherries out there available. The one behind me is Yoshino, it's one of the most common ones. It has kind of a white flower, it's got a little bit of pink in it, gets quite big. This one can get, you know, 30 feet in height, you know, 30, 40 feet in width, slightly wider than tall. They have great fall color, great flowers, a very easy tree really to grow in the landscape. They're pretty aggressive rooting, you know, that's one thing I've noticed about cherries in time. If they're happy where they are, they can be a little bit aggressive with the other things around them, just throwing that out there. I had Kwanzaan cherry at the old house and if you, you know, have a video on it on the channel, the big beautiful double flowers, double flowering variety and it was big. In the 20 years at the house, it had become probably close to 30 feet in height, something like that. I've got Okami just to the right of these Yoshinos. Okami has a slightly smaller leaf. I love the foliage on this one, really dark green foliage, early blooming variety, bright pink and, you know, one that's been around for a long time. I have covered prunus on the channel, which are flowering apricots. You know, again, we're just going to cover this whole prunus group at some point, the purple leaf plums and all of them. This cherry over here is called Snow Goose and Snow Goose is a vivid white one. It's got very upright branching, so if you have a narrower space, it doesn't take up, you know, like I said on Yoshino, they can get wider than tall. Same thing with Kwanzaan, but selective breeding, you know, there are some upright narrow varieties and Snow Goose would be one of those. There's actually a weeping cherry just over or a contorted one just over to the right that I'm seeing right now. And then, of course, they're weeping forms and just lots and lots of interesting cherries out there. Again, a little bit unfriendly to some of the other things in your garden, perhaps, you know, because I had roots, I had roots on my Kwanzaan cherry that were three to four inches around and were running through my irrigation boxes after 20 years. But cherries are the iconic, you know, the probably the worldwide most iconic flowering ornamental, small flowering ornamental trees and beloved all over the world and really, you know, one of the kind of defining flowering plants of the spring. So there you go, there are 10 flowering ornamental trees that you can use in your garden. Most of these trees in this list, outside of the Southern Magnolia, most people watching can try them in their gardens. And we're going to come back and do more details on the individual groups in future videos. So thanks for following along.