I see nothing in your description about watering while in the pot. Hopefully the tree will recover. Patience, and learn from this experience.

Dan

Poke around inside the original soil root-ball before deciding you know it was too wet. Really sounds like it dried out to me. In which case additional withholding of water is definitely not what should be done.

Sorry for not explaining better before now. I did water this tree and it also rained several times before the tree suddenly responded with wilted green leaves that took about a week to finsh for them to dry complety, and then only recently turn completly brown.

I really wondered if the potting soil stayed to wet, because usually my potted things that get too dry show me at least some yellow leaves that the still living tree later pushes off, and then often they will seem to begin recovering, if I begin to attend to them soon enough with better watering.

The soil in this tree's pot has never been dried whenever I checked it, and that is what also made me consider that it must be a type of tree which needs exceptionally good drainage.

With my further explaination, does it still seem that I have come to the wrong conclusion to what has affected this tree so badly?

Maybe its cultivar name would be of some help also. It is a Wada's Memory Magnolia that looked so healthy and beautiful when I first brought it home from the nursery.

It is about 8 feet tall and has a stong and beautiful branch structure. It first appeared to in the best conditon of any tree I purchased in the past. I am so sorry if its problems now have been caused by me doing somthing wrong, like putting it into the wrong mixture of potting soil.

I did wonder if this tree got shocked from me putting it outside too suddenly after I picked it up from the Nursery's open air greenhouse. Not certain of that though, because the two, already potted butterfly magnolias I got at different times, from that same greenhouse are still doing fine.

Have you checked the moisture inside the original soil ball? That is what matters. Intact field soil root-balls often turn out to be dry some time after re-planting, the water applied to the differently textured material around them on the new site not penetrating them.

Several times in a few weeks. So you did not ensure the tree had adequate water. This is the source of your problem. Hopefully it will recover.

Dan

No, I did not neglect watering the tree. It along with about 11 other pots I have in that area are watered regularly, and this tree is the only one out of them that came in an exposed B&B rootball form.

All the other pots seem to drain better, than what I ended up with after putting this tree in a pot, and none of those others are looking like too much or too little water has stressed them at all.

Also, when I poke my finger down into the rootball, yes I do feel moist soil that my Wada Memory Magnolia's roots should be able to take up.

The root ball is still covered within it's orginal soil. When I poke my finger into it I can tell that it is not clay soil that the tree was grown in and that the orginal soil seems to not have been displaced from it's rootball. The potting soil I described adding around that rootball only fills the extra 2 inches all around and beneath the root ball that I put in to fill the pot.

I cut the string that wraps around the top of the root ball, and rolled back the burlap; just enough so it could not be seen once I finished filling the pot to the correct level. I also brushed off just enough soil on top of the root ball to expose only the top of the tree's root flare; from that, determined that none of those topmost roots could easily be seen to have grown improperly. Hopefully this tree is not so temperamental for that small amount of disturbance to it's rootball to have bothered it enough to respond as it has.

Last night when I did my regular water routine on all those potted items, I did notice that the tree has finally begun to push a few of its dead leaves off. Seeing that ecouraged me just enough to give me a little hope that the tree still has some life in it.

Guess I need to do a scratch test to make sure. Haven't done that yet, because I have been feeling very unsure about what I should and should not be doing for the tree at this time. Currently all I am doing, is to make certain the pot's drain holes do not get blocked, and during my regular watering times for the other potted items, I'm sticking my finger in the tree's rootball to determine how much moistness I can feel. I am not watering that pot as long as I can feel moisture in the rootball of that tree.

Maybe if the tree keeps dropping its dead leaves I will get the courage to do a scratch test to see just how much green still can be seen.

Certainly hope this tree pulls through, because it is a grafted tree, and I do not think any root sprouts could be expected to produce a new 'Wada's Memory' Magnolia tree.

At least the last 5 days' high temps turning out to be another period of execessive heat with the shade temperatures reaching the 100 degree F. mark each of that
excessive heat, for our area, period is forecasted to have ended: starting today. Hopefull that turns out to be true, so all my other trees that seem to be, just, enduring will get a reprieve. Maybe not though because, I just now saw a severe weather notice pop-up on my screen which in now claiming that the high today is expected to be 101 degrees F. Certainly hope they are wrong, but not likely since it has also just now at 10am, local time, reached 90 degrees F. in the shade.