Ant gardening and some spring favourites

...and they all went marching...down...into the ground... to get out of the rain...

bloodroot after shedding petals

When people ask me what my blog's about, I usually stumble around to find a succinct phrase to describe it. It's not strictly a nature blog...poems show up...and who knows what else will come along in the future. My mumbling about philosophy and nature and stuff usually leaves my listener with a blank look on their face and they quickly change the subject.

A while ago I caught an episode of the CBC radio program "Under the Influence"  - about the importance of having a good "elevator pitch" for your idea or product or business. I think I'll try pitching my blog as "it's like taking your mind for a walk" and see what kind of response I'll get.

My last walk started with bloodroot, a poppy native to North America. While researching this tiny spring flower, I came across a new, to me, term - myrmecochory, from the Greek: meaning circular dance.

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The "dance" is the dispersal of seeds by ants. Many plants, particularly early spring blossomers, have adapted their seeds to be attractive to ants, so the insects will take them away and bury them in their colonies. These seeds have an appendage called an eleiosome that contains lipids and proteins the ants use for food.

Bloodroot seed capsules

Immature bloodroot seeds. The tadpole-like tail along the outside of each seed is the elaiosome.

For some wonderful pictures of ripe bloodroot seeds and a more detailed explanation of myrmecochory see Ants in My Plants, a post by the Roads End Naturalist.

The balance the plants have struck over millennia between their seed design and ant behaviour is delicate. The ants must eat the eleiosome and then stash the leftovers (the seeds) in their refuse piles somewhere deep in their colonies. The article I cited in my last blog mentions some evidence that the red imported fire ant, which is displacing many native species of ants, may actually damage the seed as it eats the nutritious eleiosome. Another researcher has found some evidence that the fire ants are not as effective at physically dispersing the seeds as the native species.

Will the bloodroot adapt and survive? Will it evolve into a fire ant resistant variant? I'm hoping the two little patches I know of will bloom again next spring. 

Some Spring favourites...

Marsh Marigolds

Pin Cherry Blossoms

Fiddleheads

Yes, this is an odd time to be posting pictures of spring flowers. I always find high summer a very difficult time to do any serious thinking or reading or writing. Especially with the heat wave we experienced. The list of excuses is long...my office gets too hot, the garden needs attention, it's a great day for a paddle, or bike-ride, or a nap in the bug tent, or a late night by the bonfire...etc, etc, etc. Then there's fall and all the garden stuff needs to be taken in and we went on a two week camping trip...more etc's.
To add to my distractions, in July, I took the Ontario Master Naturalist course at Lakehead University. This was an intense 8 days of lectures and field trips. (Yes, Bob, I haven't done my lichen report yet but it's in the to-do pile.) I'm still trying to process and integrate all the things I learned. 
So for this first blog of the new year - I always think of the fall as a fresh start, all those years of school have made an imprint - I thought I'd leave you with a few of my favourite spring photos and a promise of more as I try to figure out how to use my new photography program...ouch!

And look who came back to the garden...