Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Colors of Ingá II

In the first Colors of Ingá post I pointed out ingá as one of the trees possessing a bag of tricks to deceive uninvited guests wanting to have a free lunch. One adroit maneuver is that of producing new leaves in a different color, opposed to the standard green of plants and trees. In this image you see leaves which are much more mature than those illustrated in the previous post. They are larger and already beginning to turn green. The second maneuver described was that of recruiting the enemy for protection by offering a better lunch, that of nectar. In this image you can see an ant dining and wining at the extra-floral nectary. It's that point where the three leaves come together. In the case of this young tree, there was an ant having lunch at each nectary.

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