Story behind the art of Akiko Enokido

Curious Allies: Mutualism in Fungi, Parasites, and Carnivores

The Fifth New York Botanical Garden Triennial

Dischidia cochleata

I was initially looking for carnivorous plants to depict for the theme of this exhibition, but then I encountered a plant that lives in symbiosis with ants. These ant plants are found in Southeast Asia, and there is a nursery in Japan that grows them from seeds (Ito Nursery; see stringeplants.com). After listening to a detailed explanation of ant plants, I became interested in their mysterious symbiosis, which is still not well understood.

Myrmecophytes, including Dischidia cochleata, are plants that have developed special hollow structures, called domatia, in parts of the plant body in which ants live. The relationship between the ant plant and the ant species that lives there is usually a symbiotic relationship. There are two main types of symbiosis. One is the "prey-defense type," in which symbiotic ant workers provide services to attack and eliminate external enemies that harm ant plants, such as plant-eaters and vine plants. It is like providing a live-in guard with meals. The other type is called "nutrient symbiosis," and is found in ant plant species in environments where it is difficult for them to take root and obtain nutrients, such as the nutrient-poor high canopy of tropical forests. The canopy is known as an ant garden. These ant plants are epiphytes, attaching themselves to a tree for support. The plants provide shelter for ant colonies and the ants help break down organic material, which provides some nutrients for the plants. Dischidia is a nutritionally symbiotic ant plant that tends to grow in environments with arboreal ants.

Ant plants are found in tropical regions such as Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. Chomicki and Renner (2015) found 681 species of ant plants in 50 families and 159 genera. Dischidia is a genus in the family Apocynaceae and is an epiphyte native to the tropical regions of China, India, and the Indochinese Peninsula.

In the case of Dischidia sp., the ant plants do not create cavities within the plant for the ants to live in, but rather provide a home for them by intertwining leaves that cling to the bark of the trunk or branches, creating spaces between these leaves and the trunk of the tree. The undersides of the leaves around the domatia are dark purple and block out light and are a comfortable environment for the arboreal ants.

D. cochleata has coarse, opposite leaves with a woody surface texture. The flowers are orange-red with bright blue tips. For my artwork, I first completed the rugged surface texture of the leaves with colored pencils, then added layers of watercolor on top. I based my composition on field photographs from Borneo, taken by the nursery owner who provided the plants. I think that if I had visited the forest myself, I could have illustrated not only the ant plants themselves, but also their relationship with the ant nests and their environment.

As I learned about the relationship between plants living in nutrient-poor environments and organisms seeking safe nesting sites, I realized that we must continue to protect this wonderful forest where they live.

Chomicki G. and Susanne S. Renner. “Phylogenetics and molecular clocks reveal the repeated evolution of ant-plants after the late Miocene in Africa and the early Miocene in Australasia and the Neotropics,” New Phytologist (2015) 207: 411-424 dio: 10.1111/nph.13271

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Read more about this artist's work: 26th Annual