What are the primary pollinators of California bay laurel? My friend suggested that they were mostly beetle pollinated, which makes sense given the structure of the flowers and the primitive lineage of the plant. Has anyone done a comprehensive study on the pollination biology of this plant, and if they have do we know which insects are the main pollinators?
Please check the following link.
http://www.academia.edu/3381745/A_survey_of_pollinator_and_plant_interactions_in_meadow_and_grassland_habitats_of_Marin_County_California
Plz have a check here too...
http://www.laspilitas.com/classes/pollination.html
Samuel:
This link might be useful:
https://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/umbellularia/californica.htm
May be this paper may help: Kasapligil, Baki. 1951. Morphological and ontogenetic studies of Umbellularia californica Nutt. and Laurus nobilis L. University of California Publications in Botany 25(3):115-239
I have run a research on the original pollinators of the avocado (Lauraceae) in Mexico and Guatemala. See: Ish-Am G., Barrientos-Priego A.F., Castañeda-Vildózola A., Gazit S. (1999): Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) pollinators in its region of origin. Revista Chapingo Serie Horticultura 5 Num. Especial. Proc. Of Fourth World Avocado Congress, 1999, pp: 137-143. Today the European honeybee is the main pollinator in the Americas, though this is not a native pollinator there. We found that some stingless bee species and one wasp species were the avocado original pollinators. One should look for the original pollinators of the Umbellularia californica as well. I assume they also were small bees, may be social ones.
As a follow up on this, I once saw Umbellularia flowers being visited by tons of rove beetles in the mountains around the Smith River Basin early last year. The beetles seemed to have been covered in pollen.
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