Magnoliaceae

Astoundingly, the Botanics have again failed to interview me, which must surely be their loss. It hasn't prevented Nini altering our route to school to cross through an 18th C development with narrow streets, Georgian townhouses and well-kept front gardens to catch their botanical treasures. The hellebores are out there in force just now- green, white and purple varieties- and at least three Magnoliaciae variegates on the walk to school.

Strange primitive trees, which bear flower buds from bare branches. Leaves are only now starting to sprout, though the trees are already inflorescent. Last week, the bud-coverings were green and fuzzy- the only apparent photosynthetic organs available to fuel the development and growth of the magnificent waxy, perfumed blooms.


A bit of delving yields that magnolias along with water lilies are amongst the most primitive (i.e. least specialised/differentiated) and phylogenetically ancient of the flowering plants, the angiosperms. Angiosperms arose first with monocots (grasses- later the source of the neolithic revolution) in the mid-Cretaceous, and later dicots (more conventional flowering/fruiting/seeding plants) of which magnolia was amongst the first in the fossil record. In all angiosperms, investment in sexual reproduction is heavy, and marks a paradigm shift from previous vegetative (asexual/cloning) reproduction.

Magnolias evolved before bees, who like ants and termites are recent offshoots from wasps in Hymenoptera. Magnoliaceae are instead obligate on pollination by Coleopterid beetles traversing through their hermaphroditic flowers. One commentator who opines that "there are no specialized morphological adaptations to exploit pollinators" has obviously never seen the giant come-hither blooms of magnolia against an otherwise still-bare garden, nor smelled one up close.