The 1870 Magnolia of Fota

For about ten days in late winter this tree does something almost nothing else in Ireland can: it covers itself in rose-pink flowers the size of dinner plates while its branches are still completely bare. Campbell's Magnolia flowers before it leafs, and it needs decades of growth before it starts, which is why the great specimens are all in old gardens. Fota's was grown from seed collected near Darjeeling in the Himalayan foothills and planted in 1870, six years before the celebrated tree at Kilmacurragh in Wicklow that usually gets the attention. It stands in an arboretum the Smith-Barry family built across three generations, starting in the 1820s, on an island in Cork Harbour whose frost-free air let them grow things the rest of Ireland could not; the collection around the magnolia runs from Chilean conifers to Japanese cedars. The Office of Public Works keeps the arboretum free to enter, and the train from Cork's Kent Station reaches Fota in thirteen minutes. Time the trip for the flowers if you can. An 1870 magnolia in full February bloom is worth rearranging a week around.