The flower genus named after French botanist Pierre Magnol is Magnolia.
Charles Plumier introduced the name Magnolia in 1703 for a flowering tree from Martinique, honoring Magnol, who lived and worked in Montpellier. Magnol was an influential botanist best known for developing an early system that grouped plants into families based on shared characteristics.
The name was later adopted by other botanists, including William Sherard, and Carl Linnaeus formally used Magnolia in his influential 1753 Species Plantarum. The genus now includes roughly 120 species in a narrow classification, or more than 200 under broader modern treatments that absorb several formerly separate genera.
Magnolias are ancient flowering plants. Their flowers have numerous spirally arranged stamens and carpels, and many species are thought to be pollinated primarily by beetles, which existed before bees evolved. A common mix-up is confusing Magnolia, the genus, with a single species such as the Southern magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora.