Ants are attracted to flowers of a few plants. However, they are not harmful to the plants. Rather, they play two important roles in helping the plant kingdom, namely, flower pollination and insect as well as pest control.
Botanists and gardening experts tell that presence a large number of ants often alert us about the presence of aphid pest that is harming flowering plant.
It has been reported that ants mostly prefer pollinating low-growing small blossoms. However, they also get attracted to sweet-smelling larger flowers as shown in the inset picture.
Ants get attracted to pentstemon flower, plants of which have opposite leaves and flowers are partly tube-shaped with two or more lips flowers. The staminode of the flower takes a variety of forms in the different species. However, one thing typical about this flower is the long straight filament extending to the mouth of the corolla.
At many places, pentstemon is also called beardtongue flower. It has trumpet-shaped colourful blossom that attracts ants, sunbirds and hummingbirds. In India, sunbirds suck nectar by sitting on the flower itself.
Ants also get attracted to flowers such as Small's Stonecrop, Peony, Clematis, Roses and their bugs besides pentstemon.
You must watch the behaviour of ants on the flowering plants and click photographs and short videos to learn more about ant-flower relationship with visual data.
The inset pictures were taken in our house garden in Jaipur.
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