The Australian Bicentennial Arboretum celebrated its twentieth year in 2008 with the arrival of a new hybrid magnolia, appropriately herein named ‘Bicentennial’. In this article, CHRIS CALLAGHAN suggests that the parentage of this new cultivar is probably the endangered Magnolia sargentiana from western China and M. campbellii subsp. mollicomata from Myanmar (Burma), S.E. Tibet and western China, where its range is not known to overlap with that of M. sargentiana.