Weebay, I ws'd A. tomentosa 3 years ago, with great success. Soaked in hot water for 24 hours; sowed on February 20th; sprouted May 14th. I got between 5-10 sprouts, and potted up about 5. Well, I never figured out where to plant them, and so they are still in pots! Unfortunately 3 have died off with only 2 healthy plants left in 1 gallon pots. They probably all would have survived if they had been planted in the ground or potted up to larger containers sooner. But, winter-sowing makes starting stuff from seed so easy, that I have this problem with sprouting vines, shrubs and trees, and not knowing where to plant them! Supposedly, A. tomentosa and A. macrophylla are the only 2 pipevine species that will be hardy in our colder zones. They grow well in partial shade. Aristolochia is a host plant for the Pipevine Swallowtail, which I have never seen around here, but may be resident in your area. I ordered the seed from Easywildflowers.com and they still sell it. Very nice guy runs that company, generous quantities, great germination, and I shared many of the extra seeds in SASBEs. Still have some left, but not sure if they are still viable?? Somewhere I read these lose viability quickly; however I am meticulous about storing seeds, so it wouldn't surprise me if they sprouted fine.

Hi Sherry and Sandy, Thanks for your comments. I hesitated somewhat posting on this forum as I had read that A. gigantea (and I believe A. elegans) are toxic to some butterfly larvae. However, I assumed that there would be people with considerable experience growing Aristolochias on this forum. The nature of the toxicity is not clear to me, nor is it clear whether a hybrid would share that problem. Is it even known whether the "toxicity" is due to a poisonous substance or substances, or whether the plants are "poisonous" simply because they lack some molecule(s) necessary for the caterpillars' survival? Regardless, I assumed that on a forum like this there would be a number of people who started growing Aristolochias for the butterflies, but then fell in love with the genus for the plants themselves. I know that is true of many who grow Passifloras. I'm not familiar with the debates over the naming of A. durior and A. macrophylla. For some reason I had thought they were synonyms. I have a friend who used to be involved in vine propagation at UCBG and I'm hoping to get his thoughts as to whether the parent could have been A. gigantea. I'm sure there are cases where the flowers of a hybrid are larger than either parent, but (particularly in the absence of polyploidy) I would expect they are rare. An 8 inch flower (assuming the description is correct) is a pretty dramatic increase in size. The white flecks on the leaves are also highly suspicious. Again, my impression is that those are diagnostic of A. gigantea, and never found in A. durior/macrophylla or A. elegans. The white "flecks" are odd enough that many people think their A. gigantea is diseased the first time they notice them. My interest is in the ornamental aspect of the plant, as well as its adaptability. I've grown other Aristolochias--A. gigantea, trilobata/macroura, elegans, and fimbriata. I've offered both unrooted and rooted cuttings of A. gigantea for postage in the past, and at the moment I have rooted cuttings of A. trilobata/macroura that I will need to find homes for. What intrigues me about this particular hybrid is the possibility that it could resemble one of the tropical species in terms of large and dramatic flowers, yet have unusual hardiness. The hardiness is not an issue for me, but it would be for people living in most of the rest of the country. I would guess that there would be people interested in growing such a hybrid outside if it were possible in their climate. Passiflora incarnata is an example of a plant whose hybrids differ in their hardiness. Passiflora 'Incense' (P. incarnata x cincinnata) is one that is reasonably hardy for many people (typically given as zone 7, I think, sometimes even zone 6). Others are much less hardy. In that case the origin of the P. incarnata parent may be one factor, as strains from more Northern regions are not nearly as hardy as those from the Deep South. The bottom line is that for either P. incarnata hybrids or for Aristolochia durior x elegans, the hardiness of the hybrid can't be easily predicted. It needs to be tested. But yes, for those whose sole focus is attracting butterflies, the issue of toxicity is probably more important than hardiness. By the way, I think the Yahoo Aristolochia group has essentially died, with almost no posts in the last year or two.

Hi aristolo, Perhaps I should have followed up on this. This hybrid has been since discussed on the Aristolochia forum on Facebook, as well as privately: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aristolochia For actual posts, this might work: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aristolochia/search/?query=durior%20x%20elegans The thinking and conclusions are essentially identical to yours. I'll post a new photo since my plant bloomed a couple times as well. It seems highly likely that it is some hybrid of A. gigantea and A. elegans. There already seem to be a number of such hybrids out there for sale, typically assigned to one species or another. For example, the plant sold by Suncrest (wholesale) as A. elegans has flowers that are too large for that species, white spots on the leaves, etc. (I have pictures). More interesting is the suggestion (discussed in detail on the Facebook group) that there are really two species: the huge (14 inch flowers) Aristolochia gigantea brasiliensis and the small Aristolochia elegans. The hybrids between them appear to include the plants typically referred to as A. gigantea. Therefore, if the UCBG plant is in fact A. gigantea x A. elegans (or the reverse) that could make it (A. gigantea brasiliensis x A. elegans) x A. elegans. In other words, it would be 3/4 A. elegans and 1/4 A. gigantea brasiliensis. If you are still interested in trying the UCBG plant I can give you something at some point. I have a couple rooted, but was planning on giving one or two of them to people. I also started new cuttings about a week ago. UCBG is still selling bigger plants, with the name unchanged. Here is a link that might be useful: Facebook posts (repeated from above)

Kauorika, I am afraid I too am "not lovin it." In addition to the tight hallway you originally asked about, and the lack of enough aisleway space between the shower and sink in Bath 1 (that betaiota mentioned), I see the following issues: 1) The extraoridinarily thick exterior walls are eating up a fairly high percentage of your potential interior space. Are you really planning for the exterior walls to be 18 inches thick? And if so, why are they so thick? Are you building a straw bale house? 2) While your hallways aren't that long, because your house is so small, the hallways, foyer, and staircase take up way too much of your available floorspace. 3) I think you're going to find it hard to fit a full-sized bed and a dresser into the bedroom and still have room to easily move about to reach the closet. I only see two possible walls for the head of the bed to go against. Either it will have to be placed under the (#12) windows - assuming they are high enough - or it'll have to be placed against the wall directly across from those windows. In the first case, getting around the bed to reach the closet is going to require squeezing between the foot of the bed and that bumped in wall that you have because of the little hallway niche you created to provide access to the bathroom. In the second, it's gonna be a long walk around the bed every time you need to get to the closet. And, because the bathroom really needs to be made wider (to give you room to slip past the shower), the bedroom will have to be made smaller making this problem even worse. 4) I suspect you visualize a pretty little seating area in the "window bumpout" in the bedoom. A couple of comfy chairs, maybe a little round table? At 7.5 feet, the bumpout is just barely wide enough for that purpose but, depending on the direction that house faces, the windows on three sides could effectively create a little greenhouse and make the window bumpout area uncomfortably warm all the time. And, if you need to reduce the width of the bedroom to make the bath wider, your bed may crown any furniture you attempt to put in the window bump-out. 5) The dining room is just too small to accomodate anything more than maybe a tiny little four-seat round table. Remember, you need space all the way around your dining table for diners to get in and out of their chairs. And, because the only path from front entry to great room goes right thru the dining room, if the dining room is not wide enough, you'll constantly be having to duck around dining room chairs to get to the great room. 6) The pony wall/bar between kitchen and great room is a problem. The plans show that it is supposed to be 42" inches high as measured from the kitchen floor. Then the great room floor is dropped down from the kitchen floor level. If I'm reading the plans correctly, there are TWO steps down, with a 6" drop for each step. That means the great room floor is 12" lower than the kitchen floor. So, from the great room side, that pony wall is going to be 54" high! Now I'm fairly tall but a 54" high bar would be uncomfortably high even for me. And, it would be at chin height for my best friend. No way that is gonna work. 7) I see no possible way to arrange furniture in the "great room." You have a window seat on one wall. YOu have a kitchen bar and the step down entry on a second wall. YOu have the fireplace and built-in bookcases on the third wall. And you have a wall of windows and an inswinging patio door on the last wall. You have NO reasonably blank walls against which you can place a sofa or a couple of easy chairs. That means everything is going to have to "float" which would be fine EXCEPT that floating furniture arrangements take more space than arrangements where the furniture is pushed up against the walls. Here, your whole room (except for the window seat niche) is only about 12X15. By the time you leave space in front of the window seat niche for an aisleway from kitchen to that patio door, and leave space for barstools at the bar and aisleway space to reach them, and leave space in front of your bookcases so you can get to books shelved there - your available room for arranging furniture has shrunk to something like 9 ft x 12 ft. Possibly even smaller Awfully hard to fit a sofa and a couple of easy chairs into theat small a space. If you want an end table or two, or a coffee table, or an ottoman, you're totally sunk. Do yourself a BIG favor. Make some scaled cutouts to represent every piece of furniture you THINK you want to have in each of your rooms and see if you can make everything fit. And, remember that you need room to walk around and REACH each piece of furniture so be sure to build in aisleway spaces. sorry to be so negative but even without seeing the upstairs or the basement, my inclination would be to scrap this plan and start over fress. There are just too many issues on this one floor that cannot be addressed with via small tweaks (i.e., tweaks that don't require moving the staircase or any exteior walls.)