A Star (Magnolia)

“It looks like Scotland!” is a joke in my family. In Long Way Round, whenever Ewan McGregor is impressed, he says, “It’s beautiful! It looks like Scotland!” Such home-pride is sweet in a major international star, especially since Scotland probably doesn’t show up on many shortlists of “The World’s Most Beautiful Places.” But maybe he’s not so far off base. My springtime visit to Scotland in 1998 was a kind of aesthetic awakening for me.

On that trip I developed a taste for peaty whisky. I visited the Mackintosh House where, despairing of ever achieving such orderliness in my own home, I still brought back a dedication to black and white grids, roses, and checkered lilies. I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh, where the star of the show for me was this small tree, the star magnolia. I didn’t know it at the time, but star magnolias are actually pretty common trees. I see them all over Seattle, and I doubt that they were all planted after my trip to Scotland. But for some reason, I only saw the beauty after I saw Scotland.