Plants

Weirdest Plants
Amazing Plant
Feeding Off Roots
Sunlight Not Necessary
Camel's Foot Climber
Living Houses
How Trees Cope with the Cold
Beautiful And Useful
Seed Power
Dreaded Flowers
A Strange Friendship
Lotus Lore
A Valley of flowers
The Delectable Durian
Red for Safety
Touch Me Not
Eco-Friendly Oil
Crazy Plant
The Civet fruit tree
The Toughest EucalyptusTree
Mutual Benefits
The Plant Clock
Desert Curiosity
In Search of Water
Keep Off!
Kicking Trees!
Velcro Plants!
The Quiver Tree
Helicopter-like Seeds
The New Beginning
Growing From A Bud
The Stranglers
Two-In-One
The Garden of Algae
Ivory Substitutes
Crying Trees
The Largest Seed
Most Expensive Spice
Passion Flowers
Daffodils Dance the Twist!
Dancing Leaves
The Tallest Flowering Tree
The Super Fruit
The White Dhup
Lighthouse of the Pampas
Exploding Leaves
The Titan Arum
Plant Guide
War Paint
The Dragon's Mouth

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Mutual Benefits

The bull’s horn acacia is a tree that grows in South America. To deter grazing animals, the acacia has a pair of fearsome thorns, about 5 cm long and joined at the base. A queen ant bores a hole near the tip, just big enough to allow her to crawl into the hollow base and lays her eggs. When the worker ants are born, they come out to eat up any insects that may land on the acacia's leaves and stems.
The ants also depend on the nectar exuded from glands underneath the acacia's leaf stalks all year round. Small fat-rich orange beads on the tips of the leaflets also provide a nutritious meal for the ant larvae.
The acacia is rewarded for its hospitality in more ways than one.

Pests are devoured, of course, but the ants also travel regularly down the acacia’s trunk and chew up seedlings of other plants that have dared to grow inside a 30-cm radius surrounding the tree. Neither is any plant allowed to even touch the acacia from above! The ants cross over to the offending tree and attack the rogue branch so severely that it dies.

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Last updated on :2/27/2006