Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

402 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
all, with the exception of the herbaceous species,
are infested by ants. The order is Polygonese ;
the ant -infested species belong to the genera
Triplaris, Coccoloba, Campderia, Symmeria, and
and the exceptions are species of
Rupprechtia ;
Polygonum, some of them closely resembling
common European species. All, both trees and
herbs, grow in moist situations, and most of them
on lands subject to periodical inundations. Not
a habitation
only is every lignescent Polygonea
for ants, but the whole of the medulla of every
plant, from the root nearly to the growing apex of
the ramuli, is scooped out by those insects. The
ants make a lodgment in the young stem of the
tree or shrub, and as it increases in size and puts
forth branch after branch, they extend their hollow
ways through all its ramifications. They appear
to all belong to a single genus, and are long and
slender, with a fusiform, very fine -pointed, dark-
colourecl, shining abdomen,- and they all
sting
virulently. They are known in Brazil by the name
of " '
Tachi or "
Tac^ba," and in Peru by that of
and in both countries the same
"Tangarana";
name is commonly applied to any tree they infest
as to the ants themselves.
A few trees and shrubs of other orders are
similarly infested by Tachi ants ; such
as Platy-
miscium (Vog.) in Leguminosse, Tachia (Aubl.) in
Gentianeae, and Mabea (Aubl.) in Euphorbiacese.
Triplaris surinamensis, Camb., a Polygoneous
tree of very rapid growth, reaching at maturity a
hundred or more feet in height, and conspicuous
from afar when in fruit from the abundance and
bright red colour of its enlarged
shuttlecock -like