This is a most generous plant, in the size and abundance of its flowers and leaves. To many of us, the magnolia tree (Magnolia grandiflora) is a familiar sight if rather extravagant: a tall spreading tree, with large, very noticeable leaves and even more remarkable flowers as befits the name of the species, grandiflora, i.e., big flowers. For once, these common perceptions agree with science. Not all of them, though. One may construe naively the name “magnolia” to be derived from the Latin magnus, i.e., “large”. Actually, the name of this plant was given — by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) himself — as an homage to Pierre Magnol (1638-1715), who was a physician and a botanist in Montpellier, France (and whose family name may indeed have come from the Latin adjective). A protestant, Magnol was initially blocked by his religion from appointment to a professorship of botany at the University of Montpellier. He studied extensively (2,000 species) the plants of his region, the Languedoc, in Southern France by the Mediterranean.
Afterwards, ‟Magnolia‟ became a first name for girls. The Catholic Church officialized this fashion, associating Magnolia with St. Flora. On the same topic of dedications, I dedicate this piece to the memory of Magnolia Gomes de Oliveira, a Brazilian lady who was our live-in maid in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1950s and who became a friend of the family. But back to the magnolia tree. Magnolias are among the most primitive plants in evolutionary history. Fossil records show existence of magnolias in Europe, North America and Asia over 95 million years ago. They appeared before bees, magnolias slowly changed their flowers to become more attractive to bees. Not with nectar though, but with proteins in the pollen.
Today, magnolias are indigenous only in Southern China and the Southern United States. There are about 210 species of magnolia of which about half are tropical.
The magnolias we know originated in the southeastern United States and were introduced to Europe, as their name hints, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In North America, they are native to moist wooded areas in the southeastern United States from North Carolina to Florida and Texas. The State of Louisiana made the magnolia its State Plant in 1900.
The leaves are elliptic-oval, with a smooth edge, 10-20 cm long, rather hard and resistant, a shiny dark green on the top and of a rusty reddish tint on the bottom. Which evokes another personal memory. When 18, I went hitchhiking by myself from France to Sicily. While in Palermo, I culled a magnolia leaf and used it as a postcard to my mother in Grenoble, writing with a ballpoint pen on the underside of the leaf. Even though the stamp I affixed was long gone, the leaf nevertheless made its way to my mother, who by then had become used to my occasional antics.
The flowers on a magnolia tree are impressive in their splendor. Each flower is short-lived, the tree constantly sprouts new ones during the spring. The flowers begin to bloom in late spring and can be seen thoughout the summer. They are of a creamy white, sometimes of a light ivory and they smell heavenly, a jasmine-like smell.
These blossoms, about 20 cm in size, consist of three sepals and 9-12 petals, but the floral pieces are all identical. Botanists deem it a very primitive flower because, among other features such as a plethora of stamens and pistils, they lack such differentiation. Some of the oldest fossil flowers found by paleontologists are very much magnolia-like. When thinking of Adam and Eve having been expelled from Paradise, and the painter Douanier Rousseau must having contributed to this fantasy of mine, were they not clutching some magnolia seeds?
Now to magnolia trees as producers of chemicals. The flowers first. Their odor owes its aBractiveness to methyl dihydrojasmonate, which in the perfume industry is known as hedione, ever since synthesis in the Firmenich laboratories in SwiHerland in the Fifties, made it widely available. One of the first commercial perfumes to incorporate hedione, about 2 %, was Dior’s Eau Sauvage in 1966. Its composer was the famous ‟nez‟ Edmond Roudnitska (1905-1996).
Is hedione an aphrodisiac? Perhaps: reportedly, SteveMcQueen used the Eau Sauvage aftershave with that in mind. More recently, more scientifically too, hedione was shown by functional magnetic resonance imaging to activate an hypothalamic region of the brain indeed involved in hormone production in women, but not in men.
Chemicals from magnolias include also two phenolic substances, from the bark, magnolol and honokiol. Chinese medicine has used them for centuries to treat headache, anxiety, asthma, depression, gastrointestinal disorders. Their chemical structure resembles that of trans-resveratrol, the so-called French miracle, a component in some red wines. Magnolol and honokiol have a fragrant and pungent odor.
Their pharmacological activity is now confirmed by Western medicine. Magnolol binds to GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid) receptors in the brain. In cell culture, it shows osteoblast-stimulating and osteoclast-inhibiting activities.
Honokiol is active against liver cancer in the laboratory. It helps to reduce side-effects in liver cells from the cis-platin antitumoral medication.
Moreover, honokiol can travel across the blood brain barrier and is an effective neuro-protective agent. We may yet see clinical use of honokiol and magnolol in the treatment of Alzheimers.