Close-Up of Seed with Food Body Attached | The Cove Forest

Herbaceous plants of cove forests, such as violets, trilliums and bloodroots (as well as many others), have ant-dispersed seeds. Such seeds have a small lipid-rich food body attached to the seed. Ants carry the seeds back to their nest, consume the food body, and then typically discard the seed on the soil surface, where it may germinate and establish a new plant.

More in this Series