Philpatrick

Microgramma bismarckii spore under reflected light.

Echinate spore of Microgramma bismarckii under incident darkfield illumination.

What type of lighting does this plant receive? What is the measured humidity in the plants growing environment?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://plantpathology.ca.uky.edu/files/ppfs-or-h-05.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiXofPembDlAhW1Ln0KHWTTD0MQFjAHegQICRAB&usg=AOvVaw20KcWIT3EFgTShKlOdJJUY

I have had plants with blister like growths on the leaves; not so much on the petioles like your plant is showing. A lab could test your plant to ensure it isn't a pathogen. Could it be a pathogen, the nature of the plant, or caused by adverse growing conditions? It could be oedema. You could quarantine the plant until a solid diagnosis is confirmed.

The hole is more honorable than the patch.

According to this link, not all Squamellaria utilize the same metabolic pathway. 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151317.t001

Occurrence records for Myrmecodia beccarii:

https://biocache.ala.org.au/occurrences/search?taxa=Myrmecodia+beccarii&q=&fq=&wkt=&lat=&lon=&radius=&offset=20&max=20

The link above is not working:

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• No record found with id: 151fcb20-a39b-4cba-b8a8-ccf03066bf33

The seeds from the fruit germinated and are developing nicely. 

The seedlings have large cavities compared to their size.

At first there is not an opening and the hypocotyl is smooth. 

The thin surface of the caudex, where the opening is forming underneath, sheds away to reveal a cavity at their base.

Thank you. The drops are about a millimeter across, very noticeable by the way they refract light, and more frequent on fronds with sori. As a test, some ants were placed on a frond and they consumed the drops, with some of the meal leftover adhering to them. 

That plant would be very interesting to see. The informative Neotropical blueberry article has great images with amazing color.

According to a phylogenetic tree of plants with extrafloral nectaries (foliar nectaries for non flowering plants); there are several ferns in the polypodaceae family with foliar nectaries.

I rechecked the L. curtisii again and it does have some drops forming.

The location of the drops matches the location of the nectaries of several other polypod ferns.

Also in another article:

"Bracken nectaries are present and active on both young and mature fronds, whereas Polypodium nectaries are active only on the young
fronds." (American Journal of Botany 85(5): 736–739. 1998.).

This link has interesting information on fern nectaries:

https://www.botany.one/2014/07/sweet-nectar-gives-ferns-bitter-taste/

I have had this fern for three years.

There is an interesting sticky substance produced in perfect single spherical drops at almost every junction at the base of the leaflets.

Detailed image and some structures dotted in a line above the drops.

Some of the drops are a light sticky fluid, and some are like sticky rubber spheres.

A lecanopteris curtisii is growing alongside this plant in the same conditions but I have not noticed the drops.

Update: The L. curtisii has recently formed a few drops.

Could this be a result of guttation, or possibly nectaries?

On 2/21/2019 at 7:28 PM, Frank said:

Are the material the ants put on the plug their droppings or some other kind of material? 

Here's one of the piles of debris the ants placed around the alveoli. They seem very content and happy. As the fruit expands outward the ants progressively remove the rim on the fruit, the developing fruit are unharmed. They explore the flat top of the fruit often with their antennae.

The pile is basically every component of the complex potting media I used for this plant along with what looks like flower pieces ( It is actually ant exoskeleton molts ) and moss.

There is also a pollen sac in one cavity.

12 hours later, the fruit in the lower part of the image above is already expanding and ripening.

The small green unripe fruit did grow and become orange quickly!

Literally overnight as mentioned in this post:

http://myrmecodia.invisionzone.com/gallery/image/19-m-salomonensis-ripe-fruit/

I had flared out the stigma lobes to get a stigma lobe count.  

The three lobe count was actually from another myrmecodia; this other plant has a stigma with six lobes but fused in pairs to look like three lobes. I had it stored in an unlabelled vial. I wasn't sure if it was from this plant, now I know it is not.

The flower image above is from a freshly extracted Myrmecodia cf. pulvinata flower that was not stored in an unlabelled vial and no room for error. 

At first the stigma resides closed in the space between the ring if hairs and the anthers. Then as the anthers expire the stigma elongates and opens into the space where the pollen and anthers are and reaches to the apex of the floral chamber. Much like a protandrous flower. I have read that protandry is also a method to spatially facilitate the development of the pollen release stage and then the stigma receptivity stage; to allow each stage to have the space to develop properly.

It has five lobes.

And an orange fruit.

It looks like the stigma has 3 lobes.

Myrmecodia pollen with two protoplasmic vesicles, one on each side (swollen areas on the left and right), and reticulate exine.

Exine reticulation detail.

The plant I am growing looks like the plant in the second photo with the rounded leaves and is labeled the same. This plant has been stable and growing very slowly for me also. At first it lost the lower leaves. In almost one years growth It has the same pair of leaves with a new set finally emerging. It is kept in highland conditions on the dry side. Compared to the growth of the plants in the above two photos, I think my plant would greatly benefit with an environmental change as well.

Hello Jeff,

The ants are a local non-invasive species. So just by chance I make observations if they happen to be around. The plant has been moved to a lower humidity environment; to see if this causes more spines to devlop than roots. The ants have gone since. Cinnamon has been used to treat orchids for fungal and bacterial problems. I use cinnamon sparingly as an ant and pest deterrent but mainly to protect flowers from being eaten by ants. Sometimes the ants eat the entire flowers of my Myrmecodia.

Cinnamon oil can be phytotoxic, to some plants, so I am cautious and test it on a leaf first.

Because cinnamon can be phytotoxic and can have herbicidal action, I am only going to use it as an ant barrier and not on plants.

The flowering has stopped for now. A dried flower is rehydrating to get a stigma lobe count and cross section, or just wait for a new flower.

I hand pollinated one flower and it looks like there is some fruit developing in a few spots. If this is fruit developing, it could be that the flowers are cleistogamous or have been pollinated by ants or an unknown pollinator. For the next flowers I am keeping the ants and possible pollinators away, and taking better notes.

Are the flowers cleistogamous or do they remain closed to select a particular pollinator? Both? Protandrous?

The plant is labeled "Myrmecodia cf. pulvinata". 

I should mention that the name of this plant is noted as Myrmecodia cf. pulvinata.

With a "cf." (short for, Latin: confer, "compare with").

Thanks Frank. I did get images of the latest flower and, hopefully, get a better understanding of the flower anatomy and breeding mechanisms. This time there was pollen and the anthers were not dehydrated and expired. Now I can see that the anthers are located at the apex of the corolla just below the petals and not low in the corolla like I thought originally, assuming all flowers are the same. The closed stigma was still developing positioned just below the anthers. 

The flower with one quadrant dissected to the ring of hairs.

This is my view of the flower structure:

It appears the unci delaminate and split leaving the upper portion open in quadrants forming the inward pointing hooks and appearance of an open flower. The lower portion of the petal delamination has an exposed cell granular surface capping off the flower; with the apex of the inner floral cavity portion remaining fused. The flowers have never opened so far on this plant. I am hoping this makes sense.

Cut-away of a petal quadrant exposing a pollen sac.

I have been comparing the M.tuberosa "pulvinata" drawings by Rosemary Wise to this plant, good artwork, all of it, and the flowers of this plant look different. They almost look like they have M. tuberosa "papuana" influence. With this new flower the anthers are not located in the characteristic location for M. tuberosa "pulvinata", just above the ring of hairs and are located high in the corolla.

In the first flower I opened,  the breeding mechanism did not seem facilitative of self fertilization, with the anthers maturing and expiring before the stigma was open and fully developed ( protandry ). I'm not sure if there is a fertilization "window" to self pollinate, but I have a creative idea to image this. In this new flower, with active anthers and pollen, the closed stigma is just below the anthers.

The ant species scouting around this plant have been known to take refuge in plant cavities naturally, and is not a stinging species. I can get an image and the species name of the ants too. Perhaps not a species of ant the plant would encounter in nature but they love this plant. My guess is the debris on the flower tops is the ant refuse pile made of excavated fragments from within the alveoli cavities. I will have to look closer.

A link with tuber images of Solanopteris brunei.

http://herbario.up.ac.pa/Herbario/herb/vasculares/view/species/9027

Here are some Microgramma bismarckii tuber images:

The tuber is split vertically in line with the rhizome attachment and the entrance canal. It has been in a preservation solution. This tuber is from the same fern in the link above.

The right hemisphere section in an approximate natural orientation.

Right hemisphere canal detail.

Left hemisphere.  

Here is the entire plant. The largest leaf is 8x23 cm with the petiole.

The base spines are club shaped then gradually transition into single spines on the stem. There is an inline ridge of spines beneath the petioles. There aren't any clypeoli.

Alveoli pairs. 

This plant has been noted to have orange fruit and not pink fruit.