Sweet Bay
July 24, 2014
By: Joel Gillespie
Today I had the privilege of working at a property in Forest Acres in a somewhat hidden neighborhood between Covenant Road and Forest Drive. As is often the case when an original owner is quite elderly, and the spouse has passed away, and the children are in their 50’s and 60’s, vines and saplings and weeds have gotten out of hand. Thankfully these wonderful folks are restoring the gardens for their mom to enjoy in her late years.
When the land was purchased and the house was custom built back in the early 60’s, care was taken to protect the beautiful trees. In fact, the placement of the house was shifted over quite a ways from the original plan so as not to interfere with a big beautiful magnolia bay tree. The sweet bay magnolia was big then and is only a little bigger now than it was then, and still healthy!
As much as I love the grande dame of magnolias herself, southern magnolia, or Magnolia grandiflora, there is something delicate about the sweet bay magnolia that draws my attention, from its looser form, to its smaller more cream colored flowers, to its smaller leaves.
There is another native tree that also goes by the common name of sweet bay, the loblolly bay tree of the Carolina coastal plain. Now I flat out love this tree, and try to encourage folks to plant them whenever I can. A while back I had opportunity to plant several of them, and in the process of reading up and such I discovered that there are actually four plants that go by the common name “sweet bay”!
I first learned of “sweet bay” in Dr. Wade Batson’s renowned Spring Flora class at USC back in 1979. The class had “visited” a Carolina bay site in the coastal plain. Now I put the word visited in quotation marks because in Dr. Batson’s classes areas were not merely looked at, they were experienced, often up to the waist in water or knee deep in muck.The well known Carolina bay areas are rich in botanical diversity and great for a botany class outing, and there I first came upon the “bay” or “loblolly bay” or “sweet bay” tree. This has been the “sweet bay” tree in my head all these years.
Thus I have had some confusion since, as I said, there are in fact four different species of plants found in our area that may go by the name “Sweet Bay.” And the most common one is not even the sweet bay of Carolina Bay fame but the magnolia sweet bay.
The four kinds of “sweet bay” are:
1. Sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana) (Magnolia family) – Swamp Bay, Laurel Magnolia – native (Check out the Duke and Wikipedia articles). The photo below was taken in one of my customer’s front yards.
Many cultivars of this, the most commonly planted Sweet Bay, have been developed for gardens. It is a wonderful plant.
2. Loblolly Bay (Gordonia lasianthus) (Tea family) – Holly Bay, Black Laurel, Summer Camellia – native ( see the Duke see and Wikipedia articles). The following image comes from the Florida plant data site:
This is the the Sweet Bay I first learned about in botany class. It is a beautiful and wonderfully fragrant and quirky native tree and one I wholeheartedly recommend for local gardeners.
3. Swamp Bay (Persea palustris) (Laurel Family) – Red Bay, Swamp Redbay, Sweet Bay – native (note the Duke and USDA write ups).
This is a small tree native to the coastal plain and which I also learned of years ago, but had lumped together with the loblolly bay. I have never planted one but I’d like to.
4. Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) – Bay Laurel, True Laurel, Sweet Laurel, Sweet Bay – this bay tree is native to the Mediterranean. See see Wikipedia and Exploring the World of Trees blog article).
This is the famous culinary “bay leaf” tree and fairly common in our area. We are at the northern end of its range but it has been planted here for a long time and has escaped and become naturalized. It has a wonderful aroma when the leaf is crushed in the hand. And yes, you can cook with it.
The photo below is from the wonderful “Exploring the World of Trees” blog article referenced above:
One customer of mine has a large (20 ft.) specimen tree that she has been growing and pruning for decades. Recently I came across a very long curved thick hedge about five feet tall of a plant I did not recognize at first. It was in fact Laurus nobilis, pruned from an early age to hedge form. It was really quite wonderful.
Hope you enjoyed this trip down Sweet Bay Lane.
Joel Gillespie
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