Bay Laurel - Ecology

Ecology

Laurus nobilis and Ilex aquifolium are widespread relics of the laurel forests that originally covered much of the Mediterranean Basin when the climate of the region was more humid. With the drying of the Mediterranean during the Pliocene era, the laurel forests gradually retreated, and were replaced by the more drought-tolerant sclerophyll plant communities familiar today. Most of the last remaining laurisilva forests around the Mediterranean are believed to have disappeared approximately ten thousand years ago at the end of the Pleistocene era, when the Mediterranean Basin became drier and with a harsher climate, although some remnants of the laurel forest flora still persist in the mountains of southern Turkey, northern Syria, southern Spain, north-central Portugal and northern Morocco. Indigenous laurisilva forest also persists in Madeira near the North Atlantic Ocean, which has moderated these climatic fluctuations.

A recent study found that native stands classified as L. nobilis in northern Spain shared greater genetic and morphological similarity to L. azorica than to populations of L. nobilis native to rest of Spain, France and Italy . This population, like the Cortegada Island population in Galicia, famous for its large grove of laurels, comes from seeds dispersed by birds but is not indigenous to the island; it originated spontaneously from laurel specimens that were planted after the original vegetation was destroyed.