Rome's oldest magnolia does not stand in a garden.
Southern Magnolia
For a few weeks in early summer this tree opens cream white flowers the width of a dinner plate, lemon scented and finished within a couple of days. This page maps every southern magnolia on the site, 17 so far across 12 cities.
Magnolia grandiflora comes from the warm swamp forests of the American southeast and only reached Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century, which puts a hard ceiling on how old any of these can be. The oldest here is Rome's, roughly 275 years, and it does not stand in a garden at all: it grows on the pavement of Via Corsini, outside the wall of the palace whose garden it was planted for. Padua's went in during 1786, the year Goethe came through the gate. Frederick Douglass planted two at Cedar Hill for his wife, on family testimony rather than a receipt. Thirteen mapped, in ten cities, and the leaves stay glossy and green all winter.
Rome
Barcelona
Photo: Josep Trepat Font (CC BY-SA 2.0)
This magnolia is probably the biggest of its kind in Barcelona, and it grows in a garden built for a maternity hospital that no longer delivers babies.
Seville
The best evidence for this tree's age is photographs it does not appear in.
Four metres seventy round is a great deal of magnolia.
Paris
This tree comes from the warm swamp forests of the American southeast, and it has grown to twelve metres in a small square off the Rue de Grenelle.
Porto
The base of this southern magnolia measures more than six metres around, thick enough that it would take several adults linking arms to circle it.
Twelve southern magnolias stand in a ring around the lake in the oldest public garden in Porto.
This garden holds 96 plane trees, 57 camellias and 13 southern magnolias, and only the magnolias are protected.
Padua
This magnolia was planted in 1786, the same year Goethe came through the gate.
Photo: Tournasol7 (CC BY 4.0)
The cloister is named after the tree.
Washington DC
Frederick Douglass planted these two magnolias for his wife, or so his household always said.
Buenos Aires
These two magnolias are the oldest living thing on the block where Buenos Aires first taught medicine.
Most old trees carry an estimated age.
Caserta
Four metres forty around the trunk is a great deal of magnolia, and this one asks nobody for a ticket.
Lucca
Three metres twenty-three round the trunk and twenty-four metres tall, which is a great deal of magnolia.
Bordeaux
When Bordeaux rebuilt its busiest square in 2021, the design added more than fifty new trees around the ones already standing.
Como
The villa's own website lists magnolias among the centuries-old trees of its park, and that is as precise as anyone has been about this one.
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