Also, one other question. The seed pod has large seeds and the little fruit have smaller seeds... That's kind of odd. Which seeds grow into trees?

Looks like a loebner hybrid. The seed pods are very common and many magnolias will produce those that look somewhat like a cucumber.....or a pine cone :-) Completely natural and nothing to be concerned about.

Aborting seed pods is very common this time of year on my Saucer Magnolia...of the thousands of flowers, only a dozen or so pods remain to the end of the season and produce seed in a typical year. Most are unfertilized seed pods but some with developing seeds can also be shed.

Definitely one of the Magnolia Kobus and M. stellata affinity, with the aforementioned M. x loebneri being the hybrid between these two. Tree is not "gigantic" as far as it goes, even the star magnolia often grows over 20' tall in time.

key word : aborted .... meaning there probably is no viable seed in them right now ... they probably would not have aborted.. if they had been fertilized .... pollinated ....

as babs said some may remain until the end of the season... and MAYBE there would be viable seed in those... IF the season where you live is long enough.. for the seed to fully ripen ...

the only question then.. might be.. what will come out of the seed.. it might not be the tree it came from ....

ken

Not for a magnolia. With as I mentioned even the "dwarf" Magnolia stellata producing specimens over 20 ft. tall - only the smallest growing kinds of magnolias can be expected to remain below such a height over time, on a routine basis. In fact for garden trees in general, one ranking system considers "Large" to be "over 60ft." With the "35 to 60ft" the magnolia you showed falls within making it a "Medium" height tree.

For your specific location I think it might be considered gigantic. It's all relative. A 40 ft. little leaf linden in my town would be considered gigantic, but in other locals it would definitely not.

At any rate, it's a beautiful tree.

If the tree in the photo above, that doesn't look to be anywhere close to 40-50' high. You can get a rough estimate of size based on how low it is branching compared to the overall height. 25-30' is much more likely....maybe 35' at the outside. Compare to the height of any nearby telephone/power poles (you can see phone/electric lines to the right). They are only 36' tall so any lines coming off of them would be at least a few feet less.

And that would be much more in keeping with the assumption it is a lobneri hybrid.

The tree is on a hill so the power lines that cut through it are on poles that are way down an embankment. But I will agree that the 35' estimate is possible, even though I think it's bigger.

Maybe it appears bigger because it IS up on a hill though, since you view it from the base of that hill. So OK. If the pole is 36 feet and I'm assuming the tree is about 6' up the hill, the lines cut through the top but the tree is 6 to 10 feet over the lines. So I'll go with 36 to 40 feet...