[LMB] Tulip trees and Magnolias

[Mark Allums]

Lois McMaster Bujold wrote:
> [LMB] Tulip trees and Magnolias
  > are quite different, we had both in our back yard when I grew up in
> Kentucky 45 years ago.  A google on Tulip poplar will show you them and
> their flower or see here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liriodendron_tulipifera
> The trees grow rapidly and can become quite massive.  Ours was maybe 15'
> in diameter.   They also can have an amaz9ing center trunk that, in
> competition with other trees, can go 20-30' up before the branches
> appear....of course, it doesn't start out like that, but either the
> branches rise or they are subsumed into the trunk.

***  Heh!  You all may be pleased to know that a tulip tree or two
appear in _Passage_.  And it is indeed something quite different from a
magnolia (of any sort).  A properly Midwestern native tree, it is, as
good as a shagbark hickory that way

Though it does lead me to wonder what all the folks who don't know what
a tulip tree really is  -- European or other non-N.A. readers,
translators, etc. -- will picture when the term comes up in the text.

Ta, L.


Well, apparently Northerners and Southerners mean something different 
when they each refer to a "tulip tree", because I am quite sure my tree 
was not a poplar.  To be sure, I have Googled, and I am 100% sure that 
my tree was not the tree pictured in the Wikipedia article.  I may 
rewrite the article a bit to point out the difference.  Mine had 
magnolia-shaped leaves and blossoms, except that the color was streaked 
with a purple hue, giving the blossom a pinkish look.  See:

http://www.californiagardens.com/Plant_Pages/magnolia_soulangiana.htm

for a look at some blossoms.

--Mark Allums