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  • Living fossils, like Ginkos

    And Equisetum/Horsetail/Schachtelhalm

    by cachius
  • Pretty sure I see many bees on Magnolias.
    by palata
  • The giant arum is another example of beetle pollinated flowers. It smells of manure so attracts manure-loving beetles.

    With more traditional pollinators, I've always found that a fascinating example of bee pollination that does not involve the plant taking advantage of the insect drinking its nectar is Ophrys Apifera, which has a distinct bee-shape silhouette and relies on the mating instincts of male bees in order to pollinate.

    by cyberjar
  • Some insects gather nectar from a flower and don't pollinate the flower. This is called nectar robbing.

    See https://www.backyardecology.net/not-all-flower-visitors-are-...

    by mvidal01
  • The earliest angiosperms appeared in the Cretaceous. This is after the appearance of Hymenoptera (Jurassic) and Diptera (Triassic). While a nice story, this needs additional substantiation. An alternative explanation is likelier imo.
    by TacticalMalice
  • Magnolia make one of my favorite smells on earth. We have a huge one in front of a house we have moved away from and back to many times. The intoxicating smell when I mow the leaves and seeds beneath it is something I want to keep forever. I collected the red seeds and put them in a bottle with alcohol and I go back and smell it often to remember. The house flooded four days before closing on selling it, so we got more time with the house. We are wrapping that up and we will say goodbye to that old house, and it’s now quite huge magnolia in the front. I never knew the flowers were pollinated by beetles or why the scent smelled like that. I collected seeds last year and cold stratified a bunch all winter in our fridge. I planted them this spring and 7 survived the process and are now growing in red cups in my new house.

    https://imgur.com/a/OAHQCW4

    by Mistletoe
  • A lot of plants aren’t pollinated by bees. There’s pollinator wasps, flies, moths, butterflies… even birds and bats are pollinators
    by chabes
  • These are the original articles this re-heat was created from:

    - https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/magnolias-be...

    - https://gardens.si.edu/learn/blog/the-botany-of-magnolias/

    by teh_klev

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