ants & bulbs
Jane McGary (Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:47:36 PDT)

Linda asked,
"Have any of you had problems with or experienced ants eating your bulbs? "

Ants have long enjoyed the dry, warm environment of my bulb frames,
and I often lift a pot and get stung badly when it turns out to have
an ant colony in it. However, I have never seen any indication that
ants eat bulbs. The only trouble I have from them is (a) they can
take the soil away from the fine roots of dense shrublets such as
Cassiope, causing the plants to die; and (b) they grab the seeds of
plants, including geophytes, that have evolved to disperse their
seeds via ants transporting them (e.g., Cyclamen, Colchicum, western
Erythronium, Trillium), before I can harvest the seeds myself. In the
latter case, they eat a structure on the seed and drop the fertile
part of the seed somewhere, so that it often germinates and grows far
from the parent plant.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA