In 1703, the French botanist Charles Plumier (1646-1704) described a flowering tree from the island of Martinique in his ‘Genera’. He gave the species, known locally as ‘Talauma’, the genus name Magnolia, after the French botanist Pierre Magnol (1638-1715).
The Magnolia family is considered to be among the most primitive of the flowering plants. The earliest known fossils of magnolia flowers date from the upper Cretaceous period around 130 million years ago. It seems that the flower structure has changed only little over millions of years.