Magnolias...

The warm weather has brought all the magnolia trees into flower across Manchester. They look spectacular. They are, apparently, a very ancient species of tree. They were around 92,000,000 years ago in the Cretaceous Period so dinosaurs would have seen them. They pre-date the evolution of bees and can only be fertilised by beetles moving about inside the flowers. This one was in a garden in Egerton Road North in Chorlton.