A type of magnolia (I believe). Certainly not the standard with large waxy leaves and large white blossoms.
Tried the D300 with an 18-200 lens zoomed to 200 together with a Canon 500D closeup lens. The combination's magnification was just right for subjects this size and using the zoom instead of moving the tripod helped when composing. The down-side for certain images is that the widest aperture is f/5.6 and I like to get closer to 2.8 in certain cases.