Monochrome of the Day: Leaves

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Friday’s Florals: Magnolia

Good morning from a cool and foggy morning.  I have my social snappers group today which makes the fog really interesting.  I have noticed some of the trees are out in blossom so we were going to walk around to find any signs of spring.  Wishful thinking when it is freezing.  But you never know.

Which brings me to my Friday Florals. This magnolia was taken a couple of years ago when it was starting to get warmer.  I love the smell of the magnolias.  There are a lot of magnolia trees in Hastings and going for a walk is a joy when the smell is so strong.

So some info courtesy of Wikipedia:

Magnolia is a large genus of about 210^{[notes 1]} 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. Fossilised 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.^[1] 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 (as well as with many more recently derived plants such as Lilium).

The natural range of Magnolia species is a disjunct distribution, with a main centre in east and southeast Asia and a secondary centre in eastern North America, Central America, the West Indies, and some species in South America.

I didn’t know that it is so old.

History

Early

The name Magnolia first appeared in 1703 in the Genera^[2] of Charles Plumier (1646–1704), for a flowering tree from the island of Martinique (talauma). English botanist William Sherard, who studied botany in Paris underJoseph 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^[3]and of Mark Catesby‘s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands.^[4] These were the first works after Plumier’s Genera that used the name Magnolia, this time for some species of flowering trees fromtemperate North America. The species that Plumier originally named Magnolia was later described as Annona dodecapetala by Lamarck,^[5] and has since been named Magnolia plumieri and Talauma plumieri (and still a number of other names) but is now known as Magnolia dodecapetala.^{[notes 2]}

Carolus Linnaeus, who was familiar with Plumier’s Genera, adopted the genus name Magnolia in 1735 in his first edition of Systema Naturae, without a description, but with a reference to Plumier’s work. In 1753, he took up Plumier’s Magnolia in the first edition of Species Plantarum. There he described a monotypic genus, with the sole species being Magnolia virginiana. 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 which was described by Catesby in his 1730 Natural History of Carolina. He placed it in the synonymyof Magnolia virginiana var. fœtida, the taxon now known as Magnolia grandiflora. Under Magnolia virginiana Linnaeus described five varieties (glauca, fœtida, grisea, tripetala, and acuminata). In the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1759), he merged grisea with glauca, and raised the four remaining varieties to species status.^{[notes 3]}

By the end of the 18th century, botanists and plant hunters exploring Asia began to name and describe the Magnolia species from China and Japan. The first Asiatic species to be described by western botanists were Magnolia denudata and Magnolia liliiflora,^{[notes 4]} and Magnolia coco and Magnolia figo.^{[notes 5]} Soon after that, in 1794, Carl Peter Thunberg collected and described Magnolia obovata from Japan and at roughly the same time Magnolia kobus was also first collected.^[6]

Recent

With the number of species increasing, the genus was divided into the two subgenera Magnolia and Yulania. Magnolia contains the American evergreen species M. grandiflora, which is of horticultural importance, especially in the southeastern United States, and M. virginiana, the type species. Yulania contains several deciduous Asiatic species, such as M. denudata and M. kobus, which have become horticulturally important in their own right and as parents in hybrids. 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 colour in many new hybrids.

Relations in the family Magnoliaceae have been puzzling taxonomists for a long time. 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. Some species or groups of species have been isolated for a long time, while others could stay in close contact. 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.^{[notes 6]}

Phylogenetic era

By the end of the 20th century, DNA sequencing had become available as a method of large-scale research on phylogenetic relationships. Several studies, including studies on many species in the family Magnoliaceae, were carried out to investigate relationships.^[7][8][9] What these studies all revealed was that genus Michelia and Magnolia subgenus Yulania were far more closely allied to each other than either one of them was to Magnoliasubgenus Magnolia. These phylogenetic studies were supported by morphological data.^[10]

As nomenclature is supposed to reflect relationships, the situation with the species names in Michelia and Magnolia subgenus Yulania was undesirable. Taxonomically, three choices are available: 1 to join Michelia and Yulaniaspecies in a common genus, not being Magnolia (for which the name Michelia has priority), 2 to raise subgenus Yulania to generic rank, leaving Michelia names and subgenus Magnolia names untouched, or 3 to join Micheliawith genus Magnolia into genus Magnolia s.l. (a big genus). Magnolia subgenus Magnolia cannot be renamed because it contains M. virginiana, the type species of the genus and of the family. Not many Michelia species have so far become horticulturally or economically important, apart for their wood. Both subgenus Magnolia and subgenus Yulania include species of major horticultural importance, and a change of name would be very undesirable for many people, especially in the horticultural branch. In Europe, Magnolia even is more or less a synonym for Yulania, since most of the cultivated species on this continent have Magnolia (Yulania) denudata as one of their parents. Most taxonomists who acknowledge close relations between Yulania and Michelia therefore support the third option and join Michelia with Magnolia.

The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for the (former) genera Talauma and Dugandiodendron, which are then placed in subgenus Magnolia, and genus Manglietia, which could be joined with subgenus Magnolia or may even earn the status of an extra subgenus.Elmerrillia seems to be closely related to Michelia and Yulania, in which case it will most likely be treated in the same way as Michelia is now. The precise nomenclatural status of small or monospecific genera like Kmeria, Parakmeria, Pachylarnax, Manglietiastrum,Aromadendron, Woonyoungia, Alcimandra, Paramichelia and Tsoongiodendron remains uncertain. Taxonomists who merge Michelia into Magnolia tend to merge these small genera into Magnolia s.l. as well. Botanists do not yet agree on whether to recognize a bigMagnolia genus or the different small genera. For example, Flora of China offers two choices: a large Magnolia which includes about 300 species, everything in the Magnoliaceae except Liriodendron (tulip tree), or 16 different genera, some of them recently split out or re-recognized, each of which contains up to 50 species.^[11] The western co-author favors the big Magnolia genus, whereas the Chinese co-authors recognize the different small genera.

So here is another of my painting efforts.

And as it is the anniversary of man walking on the moon (heard it on the radio) here is a photo of the moon.

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