Robert Pulvirenti

Six young sibling plants of M.tuberosa "papuana" Lockhart River form, which are virtually the same as the Iron Range form as the Lockhart River area is on the eastern border of Iron Range NP. All these young plants are starting to flower and growth for a Myrmecodia has been fairly rapid. Fellow member Rita Kupke germinated these plants and potted them into 50mm (2") pots from a community tray in March 2015, I received the plants in March 2016 and three months later (June) potted them into 100mm (4") pots. On average Rita's seedlings spend 20 weeks in community trays before being big enough to be individually potted, this would make these plants just under two and a half years old. The fairly mature individual plant is a McIlwraith form of "papuana" and has a very interestingly shaped caudex, it produces fruit right through the winter here and with good feeding produces 7 or 8 seed per fruit. Of all the different sub-species and forms of M.tuberosa that I grow, this plant and its seedling are the slowest growing by a large margin, weather other plants of this form are as slow I cannot say at this stage.

Hi Jay I have two of these plants and two "armatas" from Malaysia, I have inspected these plants side by side and the only difference I could find was that one form had marginally narrower leaves. At this stage it could just be seedling variation, once I grow up about a dozen seedlings of each and compare them I would not take much notice of this.

This is the plant labelled M.tuberosa "Bogor Gardens", the original material came from a grower in Singapore.

Hi Frank, I am growing this species in the southern hemisphere at 28o south in S.E.Queensland. The first small flowering on a 19 month old seedling occurred between the 20th to the 29th of October, which is our mid spring. No leaves were shed though until a misshap with a neem oil spray a week or so later followed by a fairly hot day caused about 60-70% of the leaves and its first three fruit to fall off. I was NOT happy! But the plant soon started to push out new growth and yesterday the first flower from a new bigger batch of flower buds opened, we are in the last month of summer here with about 22oC av.min. to 32oC av. max. for the last month. So at this stage not following main flowering times as in the northern hemisphere , or it may just be sporadic flowering and the plant might settle down to a main flowering period as it matures. This plant is grown in natural sunlight under shadecloth.

Fantastic news Frank, I agree with everything Jay has said in the previous post. I look forward to contributing many new articles in the very near future as my new shadehouse is nearing completion and I will have the time and space to photograph plants and share information with members. Cheers, Robert

Not much feedback from members or that many views either, sad to say I think this forum has run its course. The only other idea I have is to make it a broader subject forum, that is to add CP's and other plant oddities. Many members started by growing orchids or CP's or both and still do, I am one of them. Many members only have the odd Myrmecophyte growing in their greenhouses with other plants that require similar climatic conditions eg: CP's, Orchids, Gesneriaceae, Tropical ferns, Hoyas, Tropical aroids etc. A forum that covers all types of plants that can be grown together and still bring up to date information on Myrmecophytes could keep members that only have a few of these plants interested and they could then share their knowledge with other members of their main subjects eg: orchids or aroids etc. while learning about Ant-plants themselves and possibly increasing their collections and knowledge of these plants.

Hello all, As some of you might know I have expressed an interest in taking over this forum, I have started to look into the process here in Australia. The main concern I have is that there hardly seems to be any activity on this forum in the past weeks, only a hand full of members ever seem to log on and mainly guests are looking at this forum most times I log in. I have not posted many new articles myself lately as I have been very busy building my new larger shadehouse, but will have about a dozen new titles with pictures to post once this project is finished, if this forum is still going! I would like some feedback from as many members as possible regarding the continuation of this forum as it seems hardly worthwhile continuing such an expensive forum if there are only about a dozen or so committed members. Another thing that could be looked at is one of the free forums with advertisements, I know that Andreas and others do not like these, but it might be the only way of keeping this forum going. Please get back to me with your thoughts on this matter. Regards, Robert

Under my growing conditions in South East Queensland the first flower on the smaller of my H.ferrugineum plants has taken 92 days to mature a fruit. My post on the 17th of Jan. shows the two flowers that resulted in these fruit, the top fruit was harvested after this photo was taken and two seeds were planted. I will harvest the lower fruit tomorrow if it comes off easily.

Aurelian and Jeff Thanks for your comments, if this plant does turns out to be D. bengalensis it will still be a new record for Australia. At this time there are only four Dischidia species recognised as occuring in Australia, they are D.nummularia, D. major, D.ovata and D.litoralis. In the case of D.litoralis it does not even occur on the mainland of Queensland but on its islands of the Torres Strait as well as in New Guinea. The Australian National Herbarium has two samples of D.bengalensis both collected around the area of Jayapura in West Papua, so it is possible that it could also occur on the top of Cape York Peninsular. The person who collected this plant and initially grew it said that it is cold sensitive in southern Queensland in the winter, and should be grown under cover at this time. Cheers Robert

Earlier today I went to visit a good friend of mine who grows many different types of plants including ant plants. I showed him a list of Dischidias I am growing and he asked if I could identify a plant that a friend had recently collected on Cape York Peninsular. As soon as I saw the plant I knew it was either a new species or a distribution extension of an already known species not previously recorded from Australia. This plant looks very much like Dischidia albida from pictures I have seen , as soon as Ashley Field gets back from his field trip I will send him a picture of this plant. My good friend gave me the cutting I used for the following picture, he will now try to get a more specific collection site. Cutting of the unknown Cape York Dischidia.

Hi Jeff The average temperature in my shadehouse for the last week has been 19.8oC min. to 31.6oC max., the humidity at the moment at 10pm is in the high 80% and temp. is down to 23oC as we are having very light rain this evening. Just a side note that this months min. temps. have been a bit below average and the wet season has been slow to start, but for the week to come rain is predicted nearly every day with some warmer temperatures.. Robert.

Happy days, while inspecting my ant plants this morning I noticed the first flower bud on my largest H.ferrugineum (>90mm caudex) and other possible nodes where flowers will probably form in the next few days and weeks. I thought I would have to wait another season for this plant to start flowering, as plants in Mackay and further north have been flowering for some time now. My two largest plants have started flowering within 8 days of each other, and when I thought about this I have come up with a likely explanation. For most plants flowering and fruiting are delayed a few days for every degree moved farther from the equator within the tropics and then sub-tropics. As a documented example in the Australian Mango Industry, in coastal Queensland a given variety of mango flowers on average 4 days later for every degree of latitude south one grows them, and in my orchard my mangoes are about 6 weeks later than in Cairns. The fact that my ant plants are growing out in the open in a shadehouse under natural light with only a partial clear cover for the cooler months it now makes sense to me why my seasonal species start their flowering cycle later than North Queensland. As for some of my my exotic species that come from areas that do not experience the harsh dry season that most of our natives evolved in, they are not very seasonal in producing flowers and fruit, and tend to produce in spurts throughout the year with a bias towards the warmer and wetter season, but this is probably something for another topic. Robert

This is the plant I know as Dischidia pectenoides. It is a small species. this plant is in a 100mm half pot. This closer shot better shows the standard leaves compared to the modified hollow balloon type leaf which is normally inhabited by ants. You can also see the colour of the flowers, new flower buds forming and also the almost fully developed seed pods. A better view of the seed pods. Germination of surface sown seed of this species is easy and very fast a about 3 days, but subsequent growth is slow.

Aurelien I am not sure of the exact age of my plant, some where between 3 and 4 years old. The plants are easy to germinate and grow and the initial establishment growth is about the same as our other native species, but then I find that our other native species grow at a much faster rate. Even the few exotic species I have grow faster, but then I only have 4 plants of H.ferrugineum and two of these were fairly large when I got them, other seedlings might grow faster. What I hear from other Australian growers of this species is the average size to commence fruiting is normally a caudex size of 90 - 100mm, but there are exceptions and some can start flowering at a smaller size as is the case with the one I posted. Robert

First flowering on a very young plant of H.ferrugineum ( 70 x 50mm Caudex ). This goes to show how much genetic variation can occur even among siblings, a much larger (approx. 100mm caudex ) and older plant that grows about half a metre away has yet to produce anything. One thing this species has in common is their fairly slow rate of growth, here in south east Queensland their main growth is in the wet season ( summer and autumn), this is probably the same in their native habitat in the monsoonal climate of Cape York.

Hi Jeff They are all M.tuberosa 'Dahlii' at various stages of development. The comment I made is that of the three forms of M.tuberosa that I grow (Papuana-Cape York, Armata and Dahlii) the form 'Dahlii' is the most vigorous form for me. Robert

Three M.tuberosa'Dahlii' at various stages of development, caudex sizes are 100mm, 65mm and 55mm. Of the tree forms of tuberosa that I grow Cape York, Armata and Dahlii, this form for me is the fastest in germination and growth and is very clean growing. NOTE: This posting edited by Administrator, Frank, on December 12, 2017. Edited to show the photo that Robert was trying to display. The reason it would not load into the posting for you Robert is that it was in the format of a .zip file not a .jpg file. Once unzipped into the .jpg form it uploaded easily. Great photo of excellent plants DSCF3105.JPG.zip

I have four forms of M. tuberosa - Cape York, Dahlii, Armata and one labelled 'Bogor Gardens'. Can anyone tell me anything about the Bogor Gardens form, it looks very similar to the Armata form, only the slightest difference in leaf width as far as I can see.