One huge white magnolia flower opens on a thick, woody stem. At its center a cone of pink-tipped stamens rises from a touch of yellow, glossy dark green leaves surround it, and one leaf turns to show its rusty orange underside. A narrow bud points up at top right, the plate number Tab.

XXXIII sits in the corner, and a pale water stain runs along the right and lower edges. Georg Dionysius Ehret drew this southern magnolia from a living plant that flowered in 1737 in Sir Charles Wager's garden at Parsons Green, near Fulham, outside London. The Victoria and Albert Museum says it was the first time the species flowered in Europe, and that Ehret walked there every day from Chelsea to draw it. He measured the flower at eleven inches across and counted ten petals.

Johann Jacob Haid of Augsburg engraved and colored the plate for Christoph Jacob Trew's Plantae Selectae, published from 1750 to 1773. Trew adds that Ehret had already published his own engraving of the flower in 1737, left out of his collected plates because of its large size. The Latin name on this plate, Magnolia maximo flore, foliis subtus ferrugineis, means magnolia with the largest flower and leaves rust-colored beneath. It is in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland.