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chabes
A lot of plants aren’t pollinated by bees. There’s pollinator wasps, flies, moths, butterflies… even birds and bats are pollinators
williamdclt
mosquitoes too, though it pains me to give them credit for anything
broeng
And olive trees have genders, with the male pollinating the surrounding females.
FerretFred
I have to say that if we're also talking about wild grasses, my wire fox terrier is also a pollinator. He collects an incredible amount of seeds and burrs during his walkies investigations and I have to pick them out of his fur afterwards (risky because he gets annoyed easily).
cmrdporcupine
My pawpaws (Asimina triloba) mainly need (house) flies to pollinate. They make their flowers look like meat.

I have a couple 100 foot rows of them, it's tricky to get good pollination.

fl4regun
they are interesting plants, not many people cultivate them though, what do you do with the fruit? I hear it spoils fast and is not very marketable because of its lack of shelf life.

edit: Just saw your reply to the other guy, actually I'm in Ontario, any chance I can get a fruit or two :) ? I've been wanting to try it

pfdietz
And by wind. The major staple crops are all wind pollinated.
HughParry
If you push me into a bush then you'll make me a pollinator as well
tempestn
We've got a fly-pollinated bush in our yard. Smells like rotting death when it's wet to attract them. (I did not plant it...)
palata
Pretty sure I see many bees on Magnolias.
TacticalMalice
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.
tmoertel
Mountain mints are also pollinated by beetles—and a bazillion other critters. They are extraordinary pollinator magnets. Beetles, bees, flies, wasps, mosquitos (!), moths, butterflies, ...

A recent study of just a few mountain mint species (https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2024.2411072) found that they attracted a crazy variety of pollinators. Check the supplementary materials for the full list.

cachius
Living fossils, like Ginkos

And Equisetum/Horsetail/Schachtelhalm

Mistletoe
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

teh_klev
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/

cubefox
The second article goes into more detail:

> To minimize the risk of self-pollination, which can result in inbreeding depression and recessive mutations, the flowers open in the morning and the stigmas are receptive to pollen that is brought to them by foraging beetles throughout the day. When evening comes, the innermost tepals close around the carpel and trap the pollinating beetle. While the tepals are closed, the beetle deposits pollen all over the receptive stigmas. The stigmas then close and the anthers become active, covering the same beetle in fresh pollen so that when the sepals open in the morning, it will fly out and find another flower to pollinate. This precise delay in flower function helps to ensure cross pollination.

cyberjar
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.