Myrmecochory (pronounced: muhr-muh-koh-KOR-ee) is the dispersal of fruits and seeds by ants.
I love this word! I have written about this phenomenon with two other plants, bleeding heart and trillium. The seeds have a white, oil-rich appendage known as an elaiosome, which is attractive to ants. They will collect the seed to eat the elaiosome and then discard the seed, thus helping to disperse it.
This one is the seed of the inside-out flower. It has such a beautiful red seed nestled in a foamy white elaiosome. I imagine it being a delicate French pastry on a tray in the case of a bakery in Paris. The pods split open and curl back into interesting, wavy shapes.
I put these seeds on a well-traveled ant trail and they immediately were attracted to them. The interesting part is that they remove the elaiosome in pieces and carry it off. They don’t take the seed with the elaiosome attached back to the nest. I watched them for an hour and a half today dismantle one of the elaiosomes. They had nearly trimmed it all off the seed, but I didn’t see it to the end. It started to rain and I was getting a little chilly. I wasn’t quite prepared for the weather so I left. There were always ants tugging at the elaiosome in every direction so it seemed impossible that one might transport it back to the nest.
When I watched ants tear open the pods of the trillium two years ago, they also took the elaiosome off the seed and left the seed there. They didn’t transport it back to the nest to remove the elaiosome. That same year I took the bleeding heart seeds and put them on the same ant highway, the ants took them away within a minute without first removing the elaiosome from the seed. I’ll see if I can find some bleeding heart seeds and try them again to see what happens.
Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I hope to see you out there.
