Bonus curios: a friendship blooms between bloodroots & ants

Plants need to spread their seeds to reproduce. To get the job done on the forest floor, the bloodroot wildflower—which oozes toxic, blood-red sap—has a novel partner: ants. A bloodroot seed’s outer coat comes with a fleshy nub called an elaiosome, which attracts ants. Worker ants cart seeds back to their nest, gorge on the flesh, and pile the still-intact seeds in the colony’s “trash room,” aka rich dirt prime for new bloodroots come spring.

This process, in which ants eat and disperse seeds, even has a name. It’s a mouthful: myrmecochory, based on the Greek word for ants, myrmeco.

An interactive diorama of the earth’s biomes, Plants brims with secrets and surprises—we’ve even made a handbook of hints and fun facts for you and your kids. In these posts, we’ll peer into the sometimes-strange truths behind the worlds in our apps.