Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Recently I found an ant nest under a discarded cardboard box with brown leafhoppers that live with the ants. The leafhoppers ran back into the tunnels while the ants swarmed out.
According to the attached research paper, nocturnal Pogonoscopus species leafhoppers have an inquilistic relationship (word of the month = they benefit from) with Carpenter (Myrmex species) ants.
During the day, the leafhoppers shelter in the ant nest near eucalypts. At night they emerge and climb up the eucalypts to feed on sap. The ants attend them to get a feed from the the leafhopper’s rear.
Unlike other leafhoppers this species has long rear legs to enable them to climb up trees quickly, so it does not hop. They could also have little or no vision, although the ones I saw very quickly moved away.
from light
​The ant/leafhopper relationship is species specific and these leafhoppers would be attacked if they entered the wrong nest.

​Carpenter ants are active at night, as I noticed when photographing frogs at the claypit one night last spring.

A  day active leafhopper below  has more typical large eyes and more vertical wings

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
I discovered these tiny ornamental plants last August in a wet mossy patch surrounding a rock pool on a granite outcrop at Highbury B Block. It is a bladderwort, a carnivorous plant. There are 15 bladderwort species in WA, mainly in wetter areas.
The plants are only about 3 cm high but brilliantly coloured.
I thought that the curved flower receptacle was the bladder, but no, it has another function.
Apparently, it is designed for pollination by the Western Spinebill.
Red attracts birds, its height is right for ground-hunting spinebills, and the curve matches the spinebill’s beak. As the spinebill inserts its beak the beak pushes on to a hinged ovary and pistil and collects a dob of pollen to take to the next plant as it withdraws.

The unique insect-catching bladders are tiny little vesicles underneath the leaves. I couldn’t see them when I searched recently. Luckily they are well described in this wonderful free PDF book: Plant Life of Southwestern Australia Adaptations for Survival

​Here is an extract
 
 Each trap is partially water- filled, and has a door surrounded by sensitive hairs that direct prey to the opening. The trapdoor opens inwards upon irritation by a passing animal such as a mosquito larva. After the prey brushes against the trigger hairs, it is sucked in because of the release of negative pressure maintained inside the utricle, engorging several times its resting volume. Traps are connected to the plant via stolons, stalks or leaves. Plants may even be rootless.
After firing, the trap restores the negative pressure by removing water from the lumen until the original compressed shape is returned. After this process is completed, which lasts about 30 minutes, the trap is ready to fire again.

I took a muntered flower that had been cut off by a grub home for dissection.
 
The flower has three parts:

• A curved nectar chamber with hinged anthers at the top.
• A rear tepal  that covers the top of nectar chamber, which has a hole in the centre and an upraised tip.
• A front tepal that looks like an insect landing pad with yellow bulges that resemble anthers.

 
The top view of the dissected flower shows an entry hole for a spinebill beak with a collar that would exclude all but the smallest insect. Side views show the (very dead) ovary on top of a hinged anther.  The normally yellow anthers are on the underside.
​In summer the plant dies back to a tiny over summering corm.

Reference Floral micromorphology of the bird-pollinated carnivorous plant species Utricularia menziesii R.Br. (Lentibulariaceae)

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
My journey into underground plant parts continues.
Rhizomes are basically underground stems, which are particularly common in monocotyledons. Domestic examples are your lawn, ginger and turmeric.
Basically, stem like roots radiate out from the seedling plant that have nodes at regular intervals. Each node sprouts roots and a vegetative shoot called a culm that forms a flower.
Rhizomes are common in the bush, particularly on sedges, rushes and native grasses. These plants can live for decades. The central parent plant often dies as clones radiate outwards to form a circle. Spinifex is a great example.
In the image of a yellow kangaroo paw from my garden, fleshy rhizomes store starch to maintain the plant over summer when the culms often die off, and to help produce new culms as flowers on the old ones mature and die.

​As a very general rule of thumb there are two main types of rhizomatous plants.
• Ones with horizontal rhizomes that spread underground, which enables them to survive severe fires. Members of this group have the fleshy rhizomes and often occur in large patches.
• Ones with more vertical rhizomes that form very clumpy plants that are less fire tolerant. These tend to be more common in less fire-prone areas like wetlands and may have other features that protect them from fire.

​Have you noticed how difficult it can be to shake the sand off grass weeds after you pull them out? Many monocotyledons have sand binding roots. These secrete a gum from their roots to form a sandy ‘armour’ that helps to protect them from heat, drying and perhaps root chewing insects. Australian native plants produce very tough long-lasting sand binding root covers that persist long after the plant has died and provide important protection against erosion.

Kangaroo paws (Genus Anigozanthus) have rhizomes and sand binding roots.Two local plants in the Anigozanthus genus are Cat Paw Anigozanthus humilis (common on sandy soils) and the Little Kangaroo Paw Anigozanthus bicolor (found at Highbury B Block)