Botanical Garden Tours - #028 : Hydnophytum - The Ant Plant

Hello lovely Steemians !

Welcome to another day of the Botanical Garden Tours. Today I want to present to you the Hydnophytum, also known as the Ant Plant.

The Hydnophytum is native to Southeast Asia, the Pacific region and also in northern Australia. The overall genus of these ant plants is containing 55 different species. Actually 44 of these are only found in and around the island of New Guinea.

This unique plant is usually growing in between tree branches or on tree trunks and is known to take on a amazing symbiotic relationship with ants. The tubes are pervaded by several tunnel systems in which an entire Ant Colony can find a habitat.

One the one hand this plants are providing a habitat for the ants high up above the ground. This is a great location and very well protected place for them against any possible predators. On the other hand the ants are also serving as active guards and defensive soldiers to protect the plant from outside dangers in return.

The ants are also providing nutrients to the plants by leaving waste within the tunnels, so that the plants are capable to gather far more of these nutriants than they ever could from just the area than the roots they are covering. This plant is a really nice example of an amazing Symbiosis that evolved.

As always I hope that you enjoyed my Botanical Garden Tours. Thank you for your time and see you next episode ^^

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_{All pictures were taken by myself, ©@adalger, with a Huawei P30 Mobile Phone. For information gathering I mainly used Wikipedia.}

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Previous Entries:

Season #01

• Session #01 : #001 - #010

• Session #02 : #011 - #015

• Session #03 : #016 - #020

• Session #04 : #021 - #025

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If you want to know more about me, just look up my Introduceyourself post or follow my blog ^^

Learn more about @adalger here !

Best wishes,
Adalger