Critic's Choice Essay: Pollination Ecology of Our Native Prairie Plants

Abstract

The Oklahoma prairie in the summer is an ideal place and time to study pollination ecology. With its "cornucopia" pattern of flowering, where many plants flower synchronously, it has many flowers available every day. This past summer at the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation's Arcadia Conservation Education Area, Dr. Rebecca Pace, an entomologist, and I taught a course in pollination ecology for the University of Central Oklahoma.