Ants in the garden

Isn't the citron tree looking sickly today?
photos by Eric Jackson

Well, that sort of thing does happen when your tree is being stripped by leaf cutter ants. You don't have to get up close and see the ants --- the trails around the base of the tree are a dead giveaway.

The insects are not actually eating your tree. They're harvesting leaves to take back to their nest and use as fertilizer on their fungus garden.

If it's important to you to have a good citron harvest --- maybe you really need that candied peel for mass production of fruitcake --- you may want to use an insecticide. There are also some vines you can plant whose leaves are toxic to the ants' fungus and thus will drive the leaf cutters away.

Another alternative is to notice nature's tropical cycles at work and just let them take their course. The leaves are going to grow back on these stripped trees.

Also in this section:
Boquete and other parts of Panama hit by floods
Ants in the garden
Mars glaciers
Domestic violence as a public health issue
STRI's strategic plan

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