Tag: ants

Mystery Solved: Wild Ginger Seedpods Spotted

I was weeding—the Oxalis seed bank in my yard seems endless—so I was poking around under edges. When I got to the wild ginger, I felt something a little gooey, so I peeked. Not slugs. Whew. It was a ruptured seedpod, complete with some seeds. I am surprised to see that there are still flowers as well, as these plants start blooming in early May.

The open wild ginger seedpod shows six compartments with light olive green glossy seeds attached in double rows to the dividing membranes near the center of the pod.
Wild ginger seedpod, showing the seeds. Photographed on June 24, 2018.

According to the US Forest Service, wild ginger seeds “have a little oily food gift attached to the seed; this appendage is called an elaiosome. The elaiosomes attract ants that carry the seeds off to their underground home where they consume the tasty food and leave the seed to germinate.” That probably accounts for the gooey feeling.

There are definitely ants living near the wild ginger, including a nest of the same tiny little ants I wrote about in Mass Migration on a Tiny Scale.

The plant is also an alternate host for the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly—a beautiful blue swallowtail.

Mass Migration on a Tiny Scale

I was wandering around with my coffee this morning, when I noticed what looked like a big smear on the driveway. It looked like a lot of spilled coffee grounds, so it warranted a closer look. 

Black ants en masse, crossing concrete. The overall effect is of coarsely ground coffee dropped in a thick line about 2 inches wide that follows a seam to a crack in the concrete. A lighter smear further on is also comprised of ants, more widely spaced.
Ants migrating across the driveway. Photographed on June 24, 2018.

It turned out to be the teeny, tiniest black ants that live in this yard moving across the driveway. We have other, somewhat larger red and black ants that move around regularly, but I haven’t seen these little ants migrate before. Maybe their former home got too wet—we’ve had a good amount of rain in the last couple of days. Which direction were they going in? I’m not really sure—when I looked closely, they seem to be milling around. I could not stay long enough to figure out which way they were going.

By the time I got back, they were gone, so I am sure they are safely underground setting up housekeeping in their new spot.