There seem to be at least three or four Stellar’s jays in and around this tree at all times, flying off every minute or two with another nut to hide in their stash. And still the ground is covered in them.
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Just got around to roasting and shelling my batch today. I started at 400, but I decided it was roasting too fast. Bordering on burning but still has the chemical taste. I turned it down to 350 for a total of 20 minutes at each temp. My sample nuts tasted done at that point.
Shelling was pretty easy with my molcajete. I feel like the whole process would be easy to industrialize if they could be harvested in large enough quantities.
As for taste, I think they’re just OK plain. Tasted a bit like an espresso bean or 100% cacao. Much better was mixing them with a drizzle of honey. Was very reminiscent of chocolate.
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New discovery: They also make a fantastic topping for vanilla ice cream! Like slightly bitter, chocolate flavored peanuts.
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Have you ever noticed any insects pollinating your bay myrtles? I’ve noticed some little black gnat-like insects and the occasional native bee, but nothing seems to get too excited about the flowers.
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I am germinating about 8 bay nuts I picked up on a hike. At least one is looking very good so far
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I’ve seen mining bees (which sometimes nest under the tree) and sweat bees on them in past years when we get a warm/sunny day, but I don’t usually look too closely since most of the tree is so far out of reach. I assume something is visiting, though, since it usually holds a pretty good crop. I never see honey bees or bumblebees on it, though.
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For @Zumo (and my own curiosity), I just spent about 15 minutes sitting under the tree peering up into the canopy to try the see what kind of pollinator activity I could spot.
Three species of bee: mining bees, honeybees (mostly these, surprisingly), and one large bee that I didn’t recognize (maybe a bumblebee but it was moving a lot faster than those, and maybe was a predator wasp that just looked bee-ish).
Also saw some hoverflies I think, but they were at the limit of my vision that far up.
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Thanks for the report. I’m heading down to the orchard with myrtle trees in a few weeks and I’ll take another quick survey as well. A guy across the river set up some honeybee hives, so I’m curious to see if they’ll be working the blossoms.
Yesterday I stumbled on this excellent post after looking at my neighbors so called “Bay Tree”. Hoping it was a Laurel Bay tree and the leaves looked similar but didn’t have the smell. After some research I came to the conclusion that the tree must be a UC tree. I’ll be looking forward to trying these little seeds. Great post thanks.
That’s interesting, I’ve never seen the wavy leaf margins before. And what do you mean about lacking scent @Plants? Mine has a much (much) stronger scent than any other type of “bay” I’ve smelled, including Mediterranean “bay laurel” and various ones from the SE (red bay, swamp bay). I would also expect that U. californica would be much further along in flowering than that at this time of year down there. But the flower buds do look pretty similar.
I picked that yesterday morning not sure if that affected the leaf shape.
The smell of it doesn’t remind me of the typical dried bay leaves I’m used to cooking with. Smelling it now crushing and tearing the leaf It has a smell almost a light anise/minty sweet chocolate liqueur smell. Very strange description I’m sure.
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I think of the Umbellularia smell as “spicier” than Mediterranean bay. More like nutmeg or allspice or something, and just a lot more intense smelling, definitely not a light scent. Be warned though that it can trigger cluster headaches or migraines if you inhale it too much.
I wonder if there’s a lot of variation in the scent across the range of the species, though. I assume the Seattle trees mostly come from the Oregon end of the native range, but who knows for sure.
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What’s funny is when smelling it I kept thinking of smelling a Mexican Avocado type leaf even though it’s also different. Now I wonder what came first, the bay tree or the avocado.
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Apparently Umbellularia is the sole remaining laurel on the west coast, but that area was dominated by “oak-laurel” forests during the Miocene, including Persea (but not clear if those were avocado ancestors or just extinct cousins):
During the Miocene, oak-laurel forests were found in Central and Southern California. Typical tree species included oaks ancestral to present-day California oaks, and an assemblage of trees from the laurel family, including Nectandra, Ocotea, Persea, and Umbellularia. Only one native species from the laurel family, Umbellularia californica, remains in California today.
Source:
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Good stuff thanks. Really amazing to think about.
My take on U. californica aroma (leaves) is camphor- or menthol-like.
Trees in Portland get 30 feet tall and can have a 40-foot spread.
They over-winter well, retaining their tidy and dense habits after much wind, ice, and cold.
My tree is currently 25x20 feet, after about 30 years.
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That describes my tree almost exactly. I’m not sure how to best estimate the height, but it’s about the same height as the power lines, and I’ve regularly hacked it back on the left and near sides to allow more sun to that area of the yard, so it would likely extend over the greenhouse otherwise, the way it extends into the neighbor’s yard:
The (closed at the time) flower buds suffered no harm whatsoever from the winter low of 14.7°F last month. The trunk is very messy and wide, and I’ve no idea how old it is. The old heating oil dipstick in these photos has been cut off at about 45 inches:
Today is much sunnier and the pollinator activity is much higher, but now it’s almost exclusively an assortment of flies (hoverflies and assorted other small flies), I don’t see a single honeybee. I guess something they like more is flowering today that wasn’t flowering on the overcast day when I checked before.
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