page_title: Magnolia
section_title: Visual arts
hierarchical_section_title: Magnolia / Culture / Arts / Visual arts
caption_attribution_description: English: Magnolia flower in bronze and steel, by Sarah Maloney, from First Flowers 2014
context_page_description: Magnolia is a large genus of about 210 flowering plant species in the subfamily Magnolioideae of the family Magnoliaceae. It is named after French botanist Pierre Magnol.
  Magnolia is an ancient genus. Appearing before bees did, the flowers are theorized to have evolved to encourage pollination by beetles. To avoid damage from pollinating beetles, the carpels of Magnolia flowers are extremely tough. Fossilized specimens of M. acuminata have been found dating to 20 million years ago, and of plants identifiably belonging to the Magnoliaceae date to 95 million years ago. Another aspect of Magnolia considered to represent an ancestral state is that the flower bud is enclosed in a bract rather than in sepals; the perianth parts are undifferentiated and called tepals rather than distinct sepals and petals. Magnolia shares the tepal characteristic with several other flowering plants near the base of the flowering plant lineage such as Amborella and Nymphaea.
  The natural range of Magnolia species is a disjunct distribution, with a main center in east and southeast Asia and a secondary center in eastern North America, Central America, the West Indies, and some species in South America.
context_section_description: The Canadian artist, Sarah Maloney, has created a series of sculptures of magnolia flowers in bronze and steel, entitled First Flowers, in which she draws our attention to the dual symbols of beginnings in the flower, as both an evolutionary archetype and also one of the first trees to flower in spring (see illustration).
caption: Magnolia by Sarah Maloney
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