Magnolias are spreading evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs characterised by large fragrant flowers, which may be bowl-shaped or star-shaped, in shades of white, pink, purple, green, or yellow.

The flowers are hermaphroditic, with numerous adnate carpels and stamens arranged in a spiral fashion on the elongated receptacle.

[citation needed] Taxonomists, including James E. Dandy in 1927, have used differences in the fruits of Magnoliaceae as the basis for classification systems.

[7]The name Magnolia first appeared in 1703 in the Genera[8] written by French botanist Charles Plumier, for a flowering tree from the island of Martinique (talauma).

English botanist William Sherard, who studied botany in Paris under Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a pupil of Magnol, was most probably the first after Plumier to adopt the genus name Magnolia.

He was at least responsible for the taxonomic part of Johann Jacob Dillenius's Hortus Elthamensis[9] and of Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands.

[10] These were the first works after Plumier's Genera that used the name Magnolia, this time for some species of flowering trees from temperate North America.

Since Linnaeus never saw a herbarium specimen (if there ever was one) of Plumier's Magnolia and had only his description and a rather poor picture at hand, he must have taken it for the same plant that was described by Mark Catesby in his 1730 Natural History of Carolina.

In the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1759), he merged grisea with glauca and raised the four remaining varieties to species status.

[c] By the end of the 18th century, botanists and plant hunters exploring Asia had begun to name and describe the Magnolia species from China and Japan.

Classified in Yulania is also the American deciduous M. acuminata (cucumber tree), which has recently attained greater status as the parent responsible for the yellow flower color in many new hybrids.

Because the family is quite old and has survived many geological events (such as ice ages, mountain formation, and continental drift), its distribution has become scattered.

To create divisions in the family (or even within the genus Magnolia) solely based upon morphological characters has proven to be a nearly impossible task.

[16] As nomenclature is supposed to reflect relationships, the situation with the species names in Michelia and Magnolia subgenus Yulania was undesirable.

The precise nomenclatural status of small or monospecific genera like Kmeria, Parakmeria, Pachylarnax, Manglietiastrum, Aromadendron, Woonyoungia, Alcimandra, Paramichelia, and Tsoongiodendron remains uncertain.

[17] The western co-author favors the big genus Magnolia, whereas the Chinese recognize the different small genera.

[19][20] Subsequent molecular phylogenetic studies have led to some revisions of this system; for example, the subgenus Magnolia was found not to be monophyletic.

A revised classification in 2020, based on a phylogenetic analysis of complete chloroplast genomes, abandoned subgenera and subsections, dividing Magnolia into 15 sections.

In the eastern United States, five native species are frequently in cultivation: M. acuminata (as a shade tree), M. grandiflora, M. virginiana, M. tripetala, and M. macrophylla.

[27][28] The bark and flower buds of M. officinalis have long been used in traditional Chinese medicine, where they are known as hou po (厚朴).

Despite Meeropol's frequent mention of the South and magnolia trees, the horrific image which inspired his poem, Lawrence Beitler's 1930 photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith following the robbery and murder of Claude Deteer, was taken in Marion, Indiana, where magnolia trees are less common.