Near-black bud
The closed flower concentrates pigment across a small surface, creating its darkest visual moment.
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Family: Magnoliaceae · Pot: 23 cm · Height: approx. 70 cm
Magnolia ‘Jurmag1’ Black Tulip® is pure spring drama: before the leaves unfold, large closed flowers rise along the branches like black velvet tulips. Their colour moves between deep burgundy, plum and almost black-purple as the light changes. The flower's simple, undecorated form makes that dark palette even more commanding. Few spring flowers possess comparable visual gravity. As the broad green leaves appear, the dark spring display gives way to a full, tranquil crown that keeps the tree attractive after the last flowers have faded.
Give it open sky and room to become a tree and it will form one of the garden's most photogenic spring landmarks. Against a pale wall or silver foliage, every flower gains an almost sculptural presence and the whole composition looks immediately more mature and collectible.
Black Tulip® is distinguished by near-black bud and two further characters specific to this exact selection.
The closed flower concentrates pigment across a small surface, creating its darkest visual moment.
Thick tepals stay upright to form a deep cup without a pale inner contrast.
With time it becomes a substantial tree rather than remaining a small flowering shrub.
Why you will love it: it brings spring's darkest colour in flowers so cleanly formed that they look carved.
Plant alone in lawn or against a pale, quiet background, sheltered from strong wind and with sufficient room for its mature tree-scale diameter.
Pair with Betula utilis var. jacquemontii, Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ and Helleborus × hybridus to contrast white bark, silver foliage and dark flower.
Sun to bright partial shade, sheltered from drying easterly wind. Morning light and a calm microclimate help the flowers open cleanly.
Water deeply during establishment and prolonged summer drought. Roots appreciate even moisture but not heavy, permanently saturated ground.
Woody growth is hardy, although open flowers may be damaged by late frost. A site away from frost pockets protects the display.
An ornamental tree, not a food product. Do not use bark, flowers or leaves for consumption without specialist botanical identification.
Sun to bright partial shade, sheltered from drying easterly wind. Morning light and a calm microclimate help the flowers open cleanly.
Water deeply during establishment and prolonged summer drought. Roots appreciate even moisture but not heavy, permanently saturated ground.
Provide deep, fertile, organic, freely drained soil, preferably slightly acid to neutral. Avoid compaction and digging over the fleshy surface roots.
Apply compost around the crown and a restrained feed in early spring. Excess nitrogen favours extension at the expense of wood ripening and flower buds.
Prune only when necessary, just after flowering: remove dead, crossing or weak branches. Large cuts heal slowly and distort the natural habit.
Leaf fall is normal. Keep roots buffered with organic mulch and protect only young potted plants from prolonged deep freezing.
In its first years the magnolia invests more in roots and a few sound axes than in rapid bulk. An undisturbed root zone and deep watering during drought build its framework securely.
A young plant begins relatively narrow with a strong central leader. Each season adds longer lateral limbs and short flowering spurs, gradually changing the outline from shrub-like to an open-branched tree.
At maturity it becomes an upright vase-shaped tree 8–12 m high and 4–8 m wide, with strong open limbs and dark spring flowers.
Tree-like branching with distinct limbs and cup-shaped flowers at their tips.
Upright deep-burgundy cups open before the leaves fully expand.
After the main flowering period, broad leaves cover the branching framework.
The two views follow the same natural growth cycle.
The story of Black Tulip® begins in 1986 in North Taranaki, New Zealand. Mark C. Jury crossed ‘Vulcan’ with ‘Iolanthe’ and found a magnolia with unusually deep colour among their offspring. Its flowers stood upright in full cups, carrying the same dark shade across their surfaces.
Cuttings were taken from this distinctive plant, and its characteristic appearance was retained in the resulting plants. The selection acquired its own identity as ‘Jurmag1’ and became known under the trade name Black Tulip®. The name recalls the image that made it stand out: a dark, almost closed, tulip-like flower held on a bare branch.
The coloured floral parts of Black Tulip® are called tepals: the perianth is not divided into a green calyx and a clearly different corolla. Twelve concave tepals overlap in successive whorls around the centre. Their curvature and close arrangement create the characteristic deep cup, which remains recognisable even when the flower has opened.
A cutting carries the genetic material of the plant it came from, without the new combination of genes produced by fertilisation. This allows the dark colour, cupped flowers and distinctive growth habit of Black Tulip® to be maintained together. A seed-grown descendant may differ in these characteristics and does not automatically belong to the same cultivar.
Six precise answers for Black Tulip®, from its present scale to mature behaviour.
This is a tree-form magnolia needing a permanent position with room for its mature crown. Avoid planting close to walls or narrow paths; its current pot size does not represent its eventual scale.
Plant alone in lawn or against a pale, quiet background, sheltered from strong wind and with sufficient room for its mature tree-scale diameter.
Water deeply during establishment and prolonged summer drought. Roots appreciate even moisture but not heavy, permanently saturated ground.
Prune only when necessary, just after flowering: remove dead, crossing or weak branches. Large cuts heal slowly and distort the natural habit.
Botanically the colour is exceptionally deep burgundy-purple rather than neutral black. It looks darkest in cool weather, a closed bud and oblique light.
The main display is in spring. A few sporadic later flowers may appear in some years, but this is not continuous summer flowering.