Garden Plants - Magnolia

Pierre Magnol was a French botanist, born in Montpellier, where he lived and worked for the biggest part of his life. He eventually became Professor of Botany and Director of the Royal Botanic Garden of Montpellier and is of lasting importance because he was one of the innovators of the current botanical scheme of classification. He was the first to publish the concept of plant families as we know them, a natural classification, in which groups of plant with associated common features were described.

1703, Charles Plumier gave a flowering tree from the island of Martinique the genus name Magnolia, after Magnol. The name was later adopted by Linnaeus in the first edition of Species plantarum, with a reference to Plumier's name. This way, Magnolia became the name of the large genus of ornamental flowering trees.

The magnolia itself is a fascinating tree. The grandiflora has a scent that makes all insects drunk, and can even reduce some people to an intoxicated state. It's an ancient species which evolved before bees appeared, the magnolia's flowers evolved to encourage pollination by beetles. As a result, the carpels of Magnolia flowers are tough to avoid damage by eating and crawling beetles. Fossilised specimens have been found dating to 20 million years ago, and plants identifiably belonging to the Magnoliaceae have been dated back to 95 million years. Another primitive aspect of Magnolias is their lack of distinct sepals or petals. The term tepal has been coined to refer to the intermediate white coloured but leathery element which is neither petal nor sepal and is only found in the Magnolia

Garden Magnolia Grandiflora photograph by flattop341, used under a creative commons attribution licence