magnolia

In the magnolia's large flowers, the sepals are often indistinguishable from the petals and leaves. The earliest flowering plants must have looked like these about 160 million years ago.

Any of a group of trees or shrubs belonging to the magnolia family, native to North America and East Asia, and cultivated as ornamentals. Magnolias vary in height from 60 cm/2 ft to 30 m/150 ft. The large, fragrant single flowers are white, pink, or purple. The southern magnolia (M. grandiflora) of the USA grows up to 24 m/80 ft tall and has white flowers 23 cm/9 in across. (Genus Magnolia, family Magnoliaceae.)

Magnolia

City and seat of Columbia County, southwestern Arkansas; population (1990) 11,200. Magnolia lies 52 km/32 mi west of El Dorado, in the west of the Gulf Coastal Plain.

Settled in the 1850s, Magnolia developed as a market centre for an agricultural region. However, following the discovery of the Buckner oilfield here in 1938, it became an important petroleum-producing centre. Industries include refining, cotton processing, lumber milling, and the manufacture of wood, steel, aluminium, and chemical products. The city is the home of Southern Arkansas University (founded 1909).

Magnolia

Industrial, commercial, and residential district of Houston, Texas, 6 km/4 mi southeast of the city centre and southeast of the Second Ward, along the Buffalo Bayou. It is the city's oldest Mexican barrio (neighbourhood), having been established since World War I. The Houston Ship Channel runs through it, and it is the site of textile plants and other industrial concerns.

Magnolia

Largely middle-class residential district in the northwest of Seattle, Washington State, 7 km/4.5 mi from the city centre. Magnolia is sited on a peninsula between the Lake Washington Ship Canal (to the north) and Elliott Bay (to the south). Queen Anne Hill lies immediately southeast.