When to prune magnolias?
- Botanical name
- Magnolia
- Family
- Magnoliaceae
Magnolias are pruned from July to September. They are planted from October to March.
Magnolias are woody perennials.
Cut at the end of winter or in early spring, a magnolia bleeds sap from the wound. A cut is rarely needed on it at all. Dead and damaged branches are taken out, and a renewal cut is spread over several years.
A late frost can damage the flower buds and turn open flowers brown. The wood of a magnolia takes the freeze.
Magnolias through the year
- pruning
- planting
In short
Growing conditions
Are magnolias toxic to cats and dogs?
No. Magnolias are not toxic to cats and dogs.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- The plant dies suddenly, often in mid season and without any decline beforehand. Peel the bark at ground level and under it there is a white or cream sheet of fungal tissue, thin as the skin of a mushroom. In the soil there are black or brown strands like bootlaces. In late summer and autumn tufts of honey brown mushrooms with a whitish ring on the stalk appear by the stumps or over dead roots.
- Prevention
- The fungus spreads through the soil with its strands, from a few centimetres to a good hand's width below the surface, and infects the roots of a living plant when it touches them. So do not leave stumps and dead roots in the ground. No plant is completely resistant, but privet, lilac, viburnum, weigela, forsythia, butterfly bush, rhododendron, thuja and walnut are particularly susceptible.
- What to do
- There are no products. The only thing that works is digging out and removing every infected root and stump, which takes away the food without which the strands in the soil do not grow. A vertical barrier of rubber or thick plastic sheet, buried about half a metre deep and standing a few centimetres above ground, stops the spread into an unaffected part of the garden.
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Sources about the plant: ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Royal Horticultural Society, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026.