outdoors

Where have all the flowers gone?
photos by Eric Jackson

It's not just the roses that have disappeared from these bushes. The leaves that were there the day before are also gone.

This is the work of leaf cutter ants. Notice the trail through the grass in the photo below.

The ants didn't actually eat the leaves and roses. They cut them up into little pieces and carried them back to their underground nest, there to deposit them in a big chamber in which they grow fungi. Leaf cutter ants are farmers and the foliage they strip is their soil and fertilizer.

There are things you can do to control leaf cutter ants, but they are mostly ineffective over the long term and tend to involve toxins you probably shouldn't bring into and around your living environment. There are some plants you can grow that are toxic to the ants' fungi and deal with the problem that way, but those are vines that get all over the rose bushes and other things you would protect.

It's usually best to do nothing. Roses and a lot of other ornamental plants recover and put out new leaves and flowers when the rains come and everything springs back to life again.