Do other Magnolia grandifloras in your area bloom? Your cold zone, 8B is good, but your heat zone may not be sufficiently warm. I am at the other end of the continent (NJ/Zone 7), so mine have to endure an occasional 0 F. depending on the Winter, but Summers are HOT as he// and relatively long (and wet). Might make the difference.

7' is still tiny for this tree so assume it is not yet mature enough to bloom. Most evergreen magnolias (with a couple of exceptions) won't bloom until somewhere around 7-10 years old.

Zone 7a(NoVa) and no blooms here yet either and about 8 feet tall. I have other varieties (little gem and teddy bear) that have bloomed much smaller size, so I have to think that DD Blanchard just takes longer to bloom. Maybe this year:)

My DD Blanchard receives full sun from 1 until sundown in the summer months. During the winter it just rains and we have lots of cloudy days. Very wet winters. It is planted on the west side of my house. Yes, lots of folks have magnolia trees that bloom here. Thanks for your help.

the cliche i came up with for this situation ....

you have to grow the root mass to the point that the tree achieves sexual maturity ... at which time it will start presenting its sexual organs .... aka flowers ...

after that.. they will start marauding around the neighborhood picking up sailors .... lol

ken

Since it is a clone of a mature cultivar, the wood is already mature and capable of sexual reproduction. So it should be able to flower when it gets good and settled in (which should have already happened for this particular plant). It is puzzling indeed as to why it hasn't flowered yet. I have the same tree and it has consistently flowered here and there every year since I planted it. That said, this cultivar is not anywhere close to being one of the showier varieties and doesn't produce a large abundance of flowers in my locale.

Quote: "won't bloom until somewhere around 7-10 years old."

7-10 years from seed or since transplanting?

We got our grandaflora magnolia from the base of my daughters A/C. It was obviously a first in its first year, otherwise it would have been pulled out. As of now it is 6.5 years old, and wonder how long it is going to take to bloom.

Physical age of tree. Dirr even alludes to seed grown evergreen magnolias as taking as long as 15-20 years before flowering. This is similar to a number of other plants that need to attain a certain age before becoming sexually mature and flowering......... Cornus kousa, wisteria, various fruit trees. Propagation by cutting or grafting shortens this but does not eliminate it entirely.

Some cultivars of M. grandifloras are known to be very precocious bloomers - Little Gem and Southern Charm come to mind.

My DDB's are too young to bloom, but it's been my observation that even large trees of this clone in this area, and further south, aren't particularly floriferous.

I hate to get subscribed to another thread, but isn't the use of growth regulators fairly widespread among wholesalers these days? To produce a nice, perfectly rounded bushy plant...cutting grown magnolias can otherwise be gawky. Could some of those inhibit bloom for a few years?

Kenwoods and j0nd03 are correct that some cultivars just seem to be more floriferous than others though, and so maybe that's what is going on. OP still hasn't stated if tree is in full sun or not, right? Certainly, even as "not very far north" as DC, you'd want a So' Mag to be in as close to full sun as possible, to bloom well.

Mag. grandiflora, overall, has been known to grow and bloom well in areas with cool summers. I even saw one in Queenstown, NZ, though not blooming at that time of year. Summers there are somewhat chillier than Seattle or London - even Trachycarpus fortuneis there seemed to be struggling to survive. (but the native Cordyline australis look great, of course!) It's not like the first Cornus florida in the UK, that took some absurd amount of time to bloom and never became a part of English horticulture. Or crape myrtles.

Camellias routinely come to retailers from commercial growers loaded with flower buds even in small sizes. And then may not bloom again for years afterward on final planting sites, until significantly larger plant bodies are developed. I attribute this to production facility fertilization programs not being continued after purchase by end consumers. Perhaps a similar pattern is taking place with clonal southern magnolias on the market, which in my experience usually also come to garden centers with flowers present. Except when in less than 5 gallon pot sizes.

UPDATE:

It is now 6 years since I opened this discussion on my "DD Blanchard". Since my last post, it actually had one bloom! - and I missed it. My neighbor's kitchen window faces my DD Blanchard and he told me how lovely it was. (I wish he'd taken a photo) I checked and lo and behold, it had one faded bloom that wasn't facing my kitchen window but his - that was the year before last and nothing since. LOL - CRAZY! I'm ready to remove it now, because it has completely outgrown it's space, too tall and bushy.