Ant on peony bud. Photo by Becky Nystrom

Do you have peonies in your garden? If so, you’ve likely seen ants crawling or resting on the unopened buds and perhaps wondered why they are there. Nature is so full of surprises and lessons! This delightful ants-in-your-plants example reveals one of the many mutually beneficial relationships within the web of life and the unsung value of ants among us.

In this case, ants are peony-protectors, and the peonies invite them to come. Young buds possess tiny nectaries expressly designed just for the ants. Each microscopic gland subtly oozes an irresistible elixir of sugars, amino acids, and water, which the ants eagerly consume. The ants return the favor by protecting “their” bud from marauding creatures that may otherwise attack, nibble on, and damage the flower. Once the bloom opens, the ants retreat, but they’ll resume guard duty again once the fruit capsules begin developing. The ants thus defend the peonies’ flowers, fruits, and seeds, and the peonies, in turn, nourish their amazing little allies with valuable nutrient rewards. Okay, so what if you’d like an ant-free bouquet of those beautiful buds and blooms for your kitchen table? Just cut the flower stems, gently shake off the ants in place, put the peonies in a vase of water, and leave them outside for about 30 minutes – any additional ants not already shaken off will soon abandon their flower. Never, ever use pesticides on these little helpers, please. Although we humans are often unaware of the good deeds they do, ants help protect over 70 different flower families in the U.S., ranging from buttercups and violets to sunflowers and even some cacti. It is also known that the ecological health of woodlands is significantly supported by foraging ant species which deter herbivores and seed predators such as stinkbugs, leaf-mining beetles, sawfly, and various caterpillars in spruce, pine, larch, beech, birch, and oak, and the trees, in turn, provide shelter and other rewards to maintain the ants within their foliage, trunk, and roots.

Ecologically, ants play many other beneficial roles, as well, serving as teeny tillers of the soil, nutrient mobilizers, pollinators, and perhaps most impressively, dispersers of seeds and spores. In fact, over 20,000 species of plants around the world are known to specifically attract ants as their dispersal agents, and as such, these little creatures play big roles affecting where countless seeds and spores sprout and, on the larger ecological scale, impact plant reproduction and survival, biodiversity, and community structure. Foraging species within the Formica and Aphaenogaster genera are especially important. Amazingly, in the woodlands and wetlands of our Chautauqua region and throughout most of eastern North America, foraging ants are responsible for dispersing the seeds of more than 30% of our lovely spring ephemerals and garden favorites, including hepatica, violets, wild ginger, trailing arbutus, trillium, trout lily, Dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot, bleeding heart, milkwort, primrose, cyclamen, anemone, twinleaf, and even the spores of bracken and polypody ferns! This fascinating mutualistic ant-plant relationship is called “myrmecochory” and involves the plant’s offering of a fatty food body, or “elaiosome,” tightly attached to the flower seed or fern spore. In the case of our spring ephemerals, worker ants eagerly gather the seeds and bring them home to their underground tunnels, where the nutrient-rich elaiosomes are removed and fed to their larvae. Remaining intact and containing a tiny embryonic wildflower within, each leftover seed is discarded in a special underground chamber containing the ant society’s compost pile, and within this well-aerated waste-heap, the young seedlings experience a perfectly protective and fertile place in which to germinate. This is especially critical to our native spring wildflowers, since in temperate forests such as ours, seed-eating rodents and other predators remove approximately 60% of all seeds within just a few days of release and eventually take nearly all of those not carried off and hidden by the ants.

Ants serve as dispersers, planters, and defenders of many botanicals and play a significant role in the flow of life in the forests, fields, and gardens of our watersheds. Their societies are ancient, diverse, and complex, and they deserve our respect. Within the woodlands of the Chautauqua region and elsewhere, ants and wildflowers are intimately woven together within nature’s tapestry, supporting one another’s reproductive success and survival and contributing to the health and stability of our natural world.

The Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission to preserve and enhance the water quality, scenic beauty and ecological health of the lakes, streams, wetlands and watersheds of the Chautauqua region. For more information, call 716-664-2166, visit chautauquawatershed.org and follow CWC on Facebook and Instagram.

Ants are peony-protectors, and the peonies invite them to come.