Sweetbay Magnolia is usually a small tree in most of its native range, but in the North it can be a large shrub. Its glossy dark green leaves that are silvery beneath are usually evergreen, but are semi-evergreen to deciduous in the North. My evergreen specimen in southeast Pennsylvania drops some leaves much of the year, and it renews its leaves that fall off a lot in late March into early June to be replaced by the new season's leaves. It bears waxy, white solitary flowers to 3 inches wide in late May & June and a few in a small amount in July & August, and wonderfully sweetly fragrant. It then bears red follicle clusters that open with red seeds in September & October that are eaten by some birds, especially catbirds. The bark is smooth and gay to brown-gray. It grows in bogs, swamps, and bottomlands from Long Island & coastal New Jersey down the Atlantic Coast into southern Florida and then along the Gulf Coast into eastern Texas. It grows about 1.5 to 2 feet/year and should live about 100 years. It forms fibrous, deep coarse lateral roots and is sort of difficult to transplant. It is sold by a good number of nurseries in the South and the Mid-Atlantic Region, and sometimes in the Northeast and Midwest, and by native plant nurseries. I bought one in a 5 gallon container from a native plant nursery in southeast PA that grew fast in my backyard and is about 30 feet high in 2018. I've seen some as large shrubs in the Chicago, IL, area doing well in neutral pH soils.

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Birds feed on the fruit and disperse seeds in their droppings.

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