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ANTS AND PLANT-STRUCTURE 395
flowers solitary, rather large, terminal or axillary,
rose (turning red) ; hairs of stem, leaves, etc.,
spreading, more copious than in Tococa, and red
or crimson, corresponding curiously with the colour
of the minute ants of that viciously-stinging tribe
called " Formiguinhas de fogo "
(Little Fire-Ants)which
inhabit the sacs, and also make covered ways
of intercommunication along the outside of the
stem and branches a precaution I have rarely
noted among the Tococa-dwellers.
Myrmidone rotuudifolia, sp. n., grows in caatingas
in the lower angle of the confluence of the Rio
Negro and Casiquiari. It is only 3 feet high,
and has crowded, subunequal leaves, the larger of
each pair 3^- inches long, orbicular! -panduriform,
cordate at the base, where there is a large sac ;
while the smaller leaf is orbiculari- cordate and
mostly (but not always)
has no sac.
Majeta guiancnsis, Aubl., has very much the
habit of the Myrmidones, but it has also fistulose
branches swollen at the nodes, so that the inhabitants
have an inner way of communication between the
j
sacs at the base of the larger of each pair of sessile
leaves.
is a slender shrub with
Calopliysa tococoida, DC.,
thin hairy leaves, the larger leaf of each pair having
but the
a large bifid sac at the base of the petiole ;
frequent presence of a narro\v wing connecting
the leaf with the sac proves that the latter belongs
really to the lamina (as in the Tococas) and that
the leaf is sessile.
Examples of sac-like ant-dwellings
exist in the
leaves of plants of other orders, so like those already
described in Melastomes, that it is scarcely worth