Some can. And some already develop this growth habit naturally. But I would not consider 'Ann' to be one that would, as it has a very compact, shrubby habit and is frequently multi-stemmed.

If the above photo is showing an example of the two you have bought the forking at ground level indicates it is too late to make it into a tree shape.

If these are growing in the ground I would also wonder about how well they might transplant at the level of development shown.

Photo of 'Ann' at page below is likely to be showing the original seedling. Notice that like the one in the picture you posted it has a very low forking habit. (See also description in accompanying table).

https://www.usna.usda.gov/assets/images/as_pdf_image/Magnolias.pdf

I have experience with Little Gem Magnolias that are popular here in South Texas and they are not shrub like, as that Ann appears to be. If you want a great Magnolia, in my opinion, the Little Gems are great. However, with them if you trim branches at the trunk and the lower ones, you will "almost" never get new growth at the bottom, so you have to know what you want. That might be true of any magnolia, I'm not sure. I wanted the opposite. I wanted that growth low and my landscape person, hired an idiot who trimmed them up about 3' and I could have …. well, let's just say I was pretty upset. One got a few lower branches, but the other didn't I had 4 of them in the yard. Anyway, sometimes, you just have to experiment a little too. Good luck!

Little Gem is a cultivar of Magnolia grandiflora, an evergreen tree. Ann is a deciduous hybrid and more of a shrub or small multitrunked tree. The evergreen and deciduous magnolias occupy different niches in the garden. If you want to try and make a deciduous Magnolia into a small multitrunked tree form I think you'd need to start with a much smaller plant and train it from infancy. My personal preference would be to let it do its thing and not force it to be something it's not naturally. A deciduous Magnolia in full bloom, clothed to the ground in flowers is a sight to behold.

Magnolia virginiana is often multitrunked. Mine is.

J, is the pictured tree an example of what you are getting? If so, leave it the heck alone, it's a beauty! Embo is exactly right.....it's far too late to limb it up into a tree form. That kind of training needs to be done when the shrub or multitrunked tree is very young and adaptable to that type of pruning.

To be perfectly honest, what you are describing sounds like what most growers would consider a nursery 'cull', a reject when it applies to this very desirable hybrid specimen. Just look at the beautiful, strong, well balanced scaffolding of that pretty specimen in your picture. That plant has great 'bones'!

as i read the premise ... they want the look of a 50 year old heritage plant ... i see them all over local college town.. they are 100 years old ...

so.. first things first ... tree/shrub time... is counted in decades ... yours is one year in situ ... give it some time... every leaf is a food making machine.. leave as many there as you can.. so they can feed the roots.. so your plant can grow a root mass .. to become fully established ...

in a few years .. you can start taking off lower minor branches ... usually with a flowering shrub.. after bloom ... and start guiding your shrub.. into a favored form ... we all know topiary ... anything is usually possible ....

in the meantime.. just start observing them around town ... [when one local one is in bloom.. they usually all are.. so they are easy to spot at bloom time] ....or in arboretums.. and just look at how others have been pruned ... if you just take the time to observe.. you can usually see how it was all done .. all pruning scars can be seen for years ...

welcome to the forums.. it always helps if you mention location in your words ... the snow tells me a lot ... yours just isnt going to grow as fast as those in warmer zones.. where they have a couple more months of growing season ... so tree time is even slower ...

since you are in snow country.. understand there are what i call tropical Ms [warmer zones] ... and snow zone Ms .. so at this search i added saucer M to the search.. to make sure i avoided the larger potential tropicals ......

what they are telling you above.. is yours is never going to be a huge tree .. becasue of which one you chose .... but as i understand the question .. there is no reason.. you cant guide yours into a tree looking form ... just on a smaller scale .... is this what you are looking for?:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mature+saucer+Magnolia&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

anyway ... bottom line.. leave yours alone for a few year ... and then just start limbing it up.. like you would a young tree ... if that is the look you want .. do you know how to prune.. and have the proper pruning tools .. if not ... perhaps a new post.. when the time comes ...

be patient.. work in tree/shrub time ... you can always take more of later .. you cant glue mistakes back on ...

ken

ps: later in the year.. i would probably snip off any of the real low small branches.. that are on the ground... the usual default with blooming shrubs.. is to prune after flowering ... with a few exceptions ... of which i cant think of any with Ms ...

Plants seem to be regarded by many as the number one material that it is literally "sinful" to alter.... except and unless, it is altered in the exact way that people have been altering it for centuries! Innovation is not allowed! I find this a curious, perplexing and irrational sentiment. The fact is, mans' sole means of existence is to apply his labor and ingenuity to raw materials, thereby adding value, and trade those materials with others, covering the costs of labor and hopefully garnering a profit so as to keep going. There is not a material on earth that escapes mans attention as a possible source of income. This is how everyone survives. If they are not altering a raw material directly, then they are providing support to someone who does, and thereby the world goes 'round. We cut diamonds, vulcanize rubber, melt sand into glass, form clay into bricks, weave fiber into clothing, filter and distill water, etc., etc. Yet if anyone talks about applying anything other than basic rudimentary form to a woody plant ... watch out! The accusations of "unnatural" and "danger" quickly fly.

Plants literally have no brain or nervous system and consequently do not give a care about what is done to them. Does the negative view of altering their natural form emanate from the belief that they have soul and might not get into Heaven? I don't know what causes this belief but to my way of thinking, plants are just one more natural material and if they can be altered in such a way to more fully serve mans' purposes, then there could be no better, more tolerant, uncomplaining subject. It seems to me that the only measure of whether an alteration is good or bad is the resulting artistic effect and how the plant responds to it. Since people are known to not tell the truth about many things, the true measure of what they actually think of something, is if they will buy it or not. Usually, the the most unnatural, altered plant forms are the ones that bring the highest dollar. No question that there are more good and less good alterations, and these sort out after fads run their course. In general, people seem little interested today in things that are purely natural, except for land (which as soon as they get it they will alter it to a less natural state.) They are spending their money almost exclusively on things that others have first performed some unnaturalizing kind of work.

" i see them all over local college town.. they are 100 years old ... "

You may be seeing 100 y.o. flowering magnolias - probably a soulangeana - but not 'Ann'!! That cultivar was not introduced until the late 60's. And it is very generous to consider this much of a tree at all. 'Ann' and her sisters are not referred to as the "Little Girls" for nothing! They are far more distinctively shrubby in both habit and appearance than tree-like and I'd have to question how easy it would be to 'limb up' or take off any of the very low structural branches/stems and expect to have a pleasing result.

If you want a magnolia that offers a clear trunk span and a full rounded canopy, then look at some other selection to achieve that from the start. You wll save yourself a lot of time, effort and frustration.

A quick google search for "magnolia ann standard form" doesn't yield much of what you're after. Looking at the specimen in the pic, I can't see getting from there to your result. I think that finding what you're after would take finding a nursery that's trained them that way. It's the same with, say, a standard form amelanchier. If that's what we want (and oh boy are they awesome), we seek them out grown that way.

OP has not yet returned to clarify the form they are seeking.

you can lift the canopy .. do any of these look like what you are looking for:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Magnolia+%27Ann%27&t=ffcm&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetreecenter.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fann-magnolia-tree-1.jpg

i was hoping to find pix of ann in bonsai form.. but i cant ... which is basically pruning roots and the parts above.. to the extreme of reducing growth ... it is quite an art.. to make these look the way you want ... the logic being.. why cant you make them.. in normal size.. look like what you want ...

bottom line ... its your shrub.. and you can do anything you want with it ... nothing really dies from pruning done properly .. and you can shape it into anything you want ... regardless of the plants natural shape/proclivities ...its done all the time .. on all kinds of shrubs ...

and by lift the canopy.. i mean removing lower side branches.. exposing the trunks ... which.. again ... is what your title seems to imply ....

ken

Sorry for the late follow up. We’re just trying to get the plant off the ground a bit and create a bit of exposed trunk. We chose the Ann because it cold weather hardy and doesn’t take over its area and get huge.

As mentioned above thread a plant of this nature is better branching to the ground. Except for the details of the winter architecture (line pattern made by the branches) the main point of it is the flowering, which is most impressive coming down to or near the ground. And there is no bark interest from a kind like this.

Did you look at my link? There is a whole set of these Kosar and De Vos hybrids and they are all of similar hardiness. Yet within them the mature habit varies somewhat, with one or two being more upright than the others.

Otherwise there are multiple other deciduous magnolia hybrids on the general market, with it not necessarily being the case that only one of the Kosar and De Vos hybrids would overwinter wherever it is that you are located.

https://www.monrovia.com/plant-catalog/search/?view_all=1&query=magnolia

I honestly appreciate everyones input and expertise in each others arenas, but I honestly don't have the time to digest and reply to all of the responses. I set out with this post to determine one thing, if an Ann Magnolia could be 'trained' to achieve the look we desired. We are not interested in other Magnolias as we did our research, found these plants and are overall happy with what they are/will be regardless of whether we can train them. As I expected, I stirred the ethical pot of trying to 'bastardize' a living thing to meet my likes. We're going to get the plants in the ground, see what they look like and take the appropriate steps after that.

We want to ‘train’ these guys to have a lot of trunk showing and then getting big and round up top

I honestly don't have the time to digest and reply to all of the responses. I set out with this post to determine one thing, if an Ann Magnolia could be 'trained' to achieve the look we desired

Okay, then here's the briefest possible answer:

NO

I'm a yes or no type of person and if the answer is yes I enjoy some extrapolation. I'm not mad to here 'no'.

You of course can do whatever you like but I can't see how pruning the shrub in the photo into a single trunked specimen is going to provide the look you are going for. You wll be removing 75% of the plant to reduce to a single stem and it will takes years for it to regain a full, rounded canopy.....if ever. Not to mention that full flowering feature embo referred to. Some shrubs/trees lend themselves to this sort of approach.....others do not. It has nothing to do with 'bastardiztion' and everything to do with how the plant wants or is inclined to grow

And a 5' tall magnolia of this type is far too big and mature to start attempting to train into a standard (tree-like) form. That is something that is undertaken beginning when the tree/shrub is in the seedling stage or while still quite young and immature.

ETA: writing/posting at the same time as embothrium but agree fully with his assessment. Sorry.

I don't think the OP has ever confirmed if they are trying to grow a standard or multi-trunk version. Gosh, it would be nice to get that out of the way!!

I’ll take either! I just don’t want it to be short and super fat.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned that pruning magnolias triggers an avalanche of water sprouts and suckers that will ruin any look.