Estimating absolute pollen productivity for some European Tertiary-relict taxa

Abstract

Tertiary-relict plants are survivors from the pre-Quaternary periods. Today, most European Tertiary relicts are confined to small, isolated stands distributed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. In the past, however, the fossil record indicates that these species were probably distributed over large parts of the European continent and may have been important constituents of the vegetation. Little is known about their pollen representation, which limits our ability to reconstruct this past vegetation with any accuracy. This paper draws on the results of pollen trapping experiments in Bulgaria and Georgia, where relict stands of Aesculus hippocastanum, Cercis siliquastrum, Fagus orient..