5/2/2024 0 Comments Magnolia blooms medicinal uses![]() There are about 80 species of magnolia of which roughly half are tropical. Today they are indigenous only in Southern China and the Southern United States. Magnolias are however one of the most primitive plants in evolutionary history and fossil records show that magnolias once existed in Europe, North America and Asia over 100 million years ago. ![]() It was found by a Spanish explorer called Hernandez who was commissioned by Philip II of Spain and whose work was published in 1651. This plant survives only in a few places in the wild and, although climate change is largely to blame, the natives cut the flowers for festivals and this prevents the plants seeding. ![]() The earliest western record of magnolias in cultivation is found in Aztec history at the time of Montezuma where there are illustrations of what we now know to be the very rare Magnolia dealbata. The plant which Magnol had described is that we now know as Magnolia virginiana an evergreen American species which despite its name was already growing in Europe by the mid eighteenth century. Magnolia was named by the Swedish botanist Carl Linneaus in 1737 in honour of the French botanist Pierre Magnol (1638-1715). The purpose of this article and its associated pictures is to try to persuade readers of the validity of this statement and to quash some of the myths about magnolias being difficult to grow. “No group of trees and shrubs is more favourably known or more highly appreciated in gardens than magnolias and no group produces larger or more abundant blossoms” stated the great Chinese plant explorer, Ernest Wilson soon after the turn of the 19th Century.
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