The ants take the seed with its oil body back to the colony, consume the elaiosome but not the seed, and the seed is left to germinate in the rich soil of the ant nest.

Each seed has a fleshy cap of starchy tissue that is saturated with oil, which is called an elaiosome. Much like Trillium ovatum, and many other woodland plants for that matter, Dicentra formosa utilizes ants in dispersing its seeds, a type of mutualism that goes by the name of myrmecochory. I know better now, having seen many different oddly shaped flowers, and having realized how creative natural selection is at filling any empty niche, or at least exploiting any available one, but I still marvel at the structure and beauty of these amazing flowers. Who doesn’t love Pacific Bleeding Hearts? Many, many years ago, the first time I saw this species in the wild, I assumed it must have escaped cultivation, because I, in my ignorance, had always assumed that the bleeding hearts I saw in peoples gardens bore a flower which must have been shaped by the hand of man, since nature could never have evolved something so lovely and yet so completely unfloral in form. Dicentra formosa (Pacific Bleeding Heart)

Wild bleeding heart flower