Public displays of Myrmecophytes (ant-plants)

[derrick.rowe]

Public Displays of Myrmecophytes (Ant-Plants) numbers of which are xerophytic if not succulent. Can anyone add to this list.
Australia. Australian National Botanic Gardens, Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, Myrmecodia beccarii is on display along with some native humus impounding ferns in the epiphyte house. http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/living/g ... splay.html
Australia. Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. New South Wales, Australia. Three separate gardens.
http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/plant_info/Plant_databases
Dischidia bengalensis, D. hirsuta, D. imbricata, D. major, D. melanesica, D. nummularia. D. ovata. D. ruscifolia, Dischidia sp. Drynaria quercifolia, D. rigidula, Hoya darwinii, H. lacunosa, Myrmecodia beccarii, M. tuberosa “muelleri” (as M. muelleri), Myrmecodia sp., Myrmecophila tibicinis (Bateman ex Lindl.) Rolfe; however, this may very well be M. christinae a newly described myrmecodomic orchid. Lecanopteris sinuosa (as Myrmecopteris sinuosa.)
Australia. Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens. Victoria. Myrmecodia beccarii.
http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/dbpages/rbgce ... tail/13632
Australia. Cairns Botanical Gardens, North Queensland. Has Dischidia nummularia & Myrmecodia beccarii growing naturally and many more specimens can be seen au naturel in the mangrove forest from the nearby Airport Avenue boardwalks. But do not touch there are hidden cam-eras.
Belgium, Botanic Gardens Meise, has Dischidia, Hydnophytum, Lecanopteris, Tillandsia and some terrestrial species. http://www.br.fgov.be/PUBLIC/GENERAL/index.php.
http://www.br.fgov.be/PUBLIC/GENERAL/ED ... tenfr.html.
Denmark, Copenhagen Botanical Garden has Myrmecodia tuberosa and a Dischidia species.
http://botanik.snm.ku.dk/english/
France. Nancy Botanical Garden. Aechmea longifolia, Aglaomorpha spp. Anthurium gracile & A. obtusum. Columnea crassifolia, Dischidia astephana, D. vidalii, & D. major, Disocactus amazonicus, Drynaria spp., Elaphoglossum luridum, Grammatophyllum martae, Hydnophytum spp., Lecanopteris spp., Markea coccinea, Microgramma megalophylla, Monolena primuliflora, Myrmecodia spp., Myrmecophila spp., Peperomia macrostachya, Philodendron melinonii, Tillandsia bulbosa, T. butzii, T. intermedia, T. paucifolia, T. pseudobaileyi, & T. seleriana.
Some of these plants are grown in an artificial South American ant garden and there are some myrmecophytic trees (Acacia caven, Cecropia glaziovii, Coccoloba uvifera, Cordia dichotoma & Maieta guianensis.
http://www.bgci.org/garden.php?id=191
France. Lyon Botanical Garden. A small presentation with some Dischidia, Hydnophytum, Myrmecodia, Monolena primuliflora & Turnera ulmifolia. http://www.jardin-botanique-lyon.com/jbot/
Germany. Hesse, Frankfurt Palmengarten. A large Hydnophytum moseleyanum but incorrectly labelled as H. formicarum.
http://www.palmengarten.de/#/de_DE/index/index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmengarten
Germany, Saxony, Dresden Botanical Garden, has at least one Myrmecodia platytyrea.
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Myrmec ... rea_02.jpg
http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/zen ... htungen/bg
Netherlands. Hortus Botanicus, Leiden Botanical Garden.
http://www.hortusleiden.nl/index.php/en ... ollection/
South Africa. North-West University (NWU) Botanical Garden, Potchefstroom Campus, North West Province. The Garden spans just under three hectares and is open to the public. Hydnophytum formicarum is on display. http://www.nwu.ac.za/content/botanical-garden-index-0
Switzerland, Die Sukkulenten-Sammlung, Zürich. Has a few common myrmecodomic species.
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/sukkulenten#
United Kingdom. Bristol Zoo. There is at least one Myrmecodia specimen on display in the rep-tile house at Bristol Zoo.
United Kingdom, Scotland, Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh, Hydnophytum sp. Philippines, Hydnophytum sp. Indonesia 2002, Hydnophytum formicarum, Myrmecodia sp. Indonesia, Myrmecodia platytyrea, and some Lecanopteris spp.
United Kingdom. The University of Cambridge Botanical Garden may still have an Anthorrhiza sp. in its collection. Probably the only one on display in the world. http://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/Botanic/Home.aspx
USA. Atlanta Botanical Garden. “Has a few ant plants”
USA. California, Los Angeles: Huntington Botanical Garden has them in the back greenhouses. One may acquire tickets for occasional behind the scene tours.
USA. California, Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in historic Rancho Santa Anita, Los Angeles County, has at least one Myrmecodia on display.
USA. California, Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA.) Has a good collection of myrmecophytes on display, many donated by Frank Omilian a http://myrmecodia.invisionzone.com/member of,
http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/
USA. Florida, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens specialises in epiphytes and maintains an off-exhibit collection of ant-plants. http://www.selby.org/
USA. Texas, Houston Museum of Natural science, Cockrell Butterfly Center has a few ant plants such as Hydnophytum formicarum. http://blog.hmns.org/tag/myrmecophytes/.

[jfabiao]

The Liberec Botanical Garden, in the Czech Republic, has a few (or rather had, back in 2011).
I think I remember seeing a few in the Berlin Botanical Garden as well, last May.
And I could have sworn that I saw a few in Kew (in the palm house, maybe?) last September. Can't help you with genera, though.

[derrick.rowe]

Thank you jfabiao for these leads. I certainly expect that Kew has myrmecophytes in its collections but it would be very interesting to know what they are. Ant-plants are not well known outside of a very tiny section of academia. On past visits to Kew,I was only dimly aware of these weird plants (I had read the brief notes in Hermann Jacobsen's epic three volumes) so I completely overlooked the possibility of seeing them.

[JoZoo]

I have a few at Chester zoo. I think we aquired them with a collection of Nepenthes some years back. We don't really display them but they grow easy enough from seed so I propigated some with the intention of adding them to the butterfly house and have given some away at society meetings and things. Kids find them interesting because of the relationship between them and ants. I'll take a look and see what we have and get some pics of I have chance

[derrick.rowe]

Thank you jozoo this is most helpful. I can now list almost as many zoos as botanical gardens cultivating myrmecophytes in the UK. Continental Europe and the USA seem to be far ahead of the UK in regard to the public interest in these truly weird plants. Yet British and and one Irish academic are world leaders in this field but their didactic/marketing abilities have been poor. However, lay interest is steadily growing and may even prompt a few more visitors to British zoos. Currently the best free WWW resource with its world leading photographs is http://myrmecodia.invisionzone.com/
Although these are best known as ant-plants, googling for the word myrmecophytes is often more rewarding.

[JoZoo]

Hi Derrick,

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply, work has been busy and we have been making the most of the nice weather while we had it . I promised you some pictures of what we have at the zoo. They don't form part of the public display as I don't think we knew much about them and probably inherited them as part of some other collection we aquired so they sit on the bench in my colleagues glasshouse. I have however got some that I propagated from seed and now they are a good size I give them away all the time as they were so easy to propagate. I also intend to use some in our butterfly house so if you have any pics of them in their native environment that would be great. I also love plants with a story like these as people love to find out about how plants and animals support each other. I might even see if I can pursued our invertebrates keepers to see how the leaf cutting ants respond to them.

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[derrick.rowe]

Hello Jozoo. This program will not allow me to post photos from my computer. However, there are many habitat images and lots of reliable information on http://myrmecodia.invisionzone.com/
Aurelien the curator at the Nancy Botanical Garden who is much better informed about species in cultivation than I, informs me that your M. tuberosa form is either "armata" or "muelleri" which are among the most common in horticulture. Your other plants also appear to be accurately named.
Although commonly lumped together as ant-plants some species accommodate larger invertebrates and even vertebrates such as frogs and lizards. Indeed, some species such as the recently described Hydnophytum caminiferum are visually extremely weird and their ecology may prove to be equally so.
M. tuberosa Jack “armata” C.R. Huxley & Jebb revision in Blumea 37 p277, (1993).
Tuber irregularly globose to oblong, usually-ridged, brown, to 40x15 cm, spines sparse to dense on ridges or scattered and sometimes clustered; entrance holes in irregular arcs, pores scattered or in rings over internal honeycombed areas.
Stem usually solitary, unbranched, and erect or curving upwards, 30 x 1-3 cm; base narrow, without clypeoli or alveoli. Clypeoli obscure to distinct, alveoli to 1.5 cm usually filled with hairy bracts; spines rim both alveoli and clypeoli when they are present; fruits yellow or orange.
Populations cover a variable continuum in stem characters but the leaves are relatively uniform. A self-pollinating form.
Habitat/Range. From sea level to 500 m. (1640 ft.) from Vietnam south through the Indochina Peninsula, Malaysia and the islands of Singapore, Sumatra, Java & Borneo.
M. tuberosa Jack “muelleri.” C. R. Huxley & Jebb revision published in Blumea 37 (2) p285, (1993). Becc. as M. muelleri http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page ... 9/mode/1up.
Tubers irregularly spherical to cylindrical, grey, to 30x15 cm with many or few but never dense spines on both fine and prominent ridges; entrance holes in irregular arcs surrounding raised internally honeycombed areas, pores to 1mm either single or clustered. Stem single, often branched, to 50 x 2 cm without clypeoli but with large elliptic alveoli rimmed with fine root-like spines and filled with hairy bracts that sometimes protrude cushion-like, especially when young.
Habitat/Range, rain forest, savanna and disturbed areas from sea level to 700 m. (2297 ft.)
In most parts of lowland and slightly higher regions of New Guinea, e.g. Hombrom Bluff, and Varirata National Park, near Port Moresby; also along the historic Kokoda Trail, a popular hiking track in Central Province, and at sites in Gulf, Western, Morobe and Madang Provinces as well as the Southern Highlands. In Papua Province, west New Guinea Island, recorded on the Oregon Trail on Biak Island north of Yapen Isl., and near Jayapura City.

[JoZoo]

Thanks Derrick, this is great info. We have just opened our new exhibit called the Monsoon Rainforest and all of the aminals in it are from the Indonesian Islands, today I read that the Ant Plants are found in the Sulawesi rainforests so I will definitely be using some in there and hopefully I can get someone in our education department to do some interpretation about them and tell our visitors about their fascinating lives too. If I mange this I will let you know and of course send you a picture

[derrick.rowe]

Wow, your display sounds fascinating and may have the potential to change the future interests of young inquiring minds, a product that Britain has been so enormously successful in producing. Sulawesi is the center of diversity of the weird but aesthetic Lecanopteris ant-ferns, which would add greatly to your exhibit. They are surprisingly easy to cultivate.
See. http://wistuba.com/non-carnivorous-plants/index.php