Sweetbay magnolia

Sweetbay (North Carolina Forest Service)
Sweetbay, often called swamp magnolia or white bay, commonly grows on low, or wet lands in the Coastal Plain and less often in the eastern portion of the Piedmont region. It is often the most common tree in bays and wet pocosin.

Sweetbay (USDA Forest Service)
Sweetbay is a slow-growing small to medium-sized tree found on wet, often acid soils of coastal swamps and low lands of the Coastal Plains. The soft aromatic straight-grained wood is easily worked and finishes well, so it is much used for veneer, boxes, and containers.

Sweetbay Magnolia (Audubon)
Sweetbay Magnolia, Magnolia virginiana, is native to the North Carolina piedmont and coastal plain. It has large, sweet-smelling, creamy white flowers and spiffy “cones” with bright red fruits in the late summer and fall. The fruits will attract a variety of birds – woodpeckers, tanagers, grosbeaks, cardinals and finches.

Sweetbay Magnolia (Virginia Tech Dendrology)
Learn to identify sweetbay magnolia by its leaf, flower, fruit, twig, bark and form.

Magnolia virginiana (N.C. State Extention Gardener Plant Toolbox)
The sweet bay magnolia prefers full sun to partial shade and does best in consistently moist to wet, acidic, and organically rich soils. This species tolerates wet, swampy, and boggy soils; whereas, most other magnolias are intolerant.