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Butterfly Garden

Aristolochia fimbriata - white veined dutchmen's vines

7 years ago

Normally, I would have tacked this on to Sherry's post with the little pipevine cats playing follow the leader but after the question about post Etiquette, I had second thoughts. I know I have done this numerous times and if I've ever offended anyone, please forgive me. I've always thought of the posts as conversation threads and hadn't given it much thought before the question was posed. Sherry has taught me so much about butterflies and moths, what plants to grow and odd tidbits about their personalities, not to mention the wonderful photos she shares. Her posts almost always bring to mind something about raising butterflies.

... just wanted to share the following.

Of all the
butterflies, the Pipevine seem to stick around their birth site. I think Sherry taught me to watch for this behavior. Isn't it something how these small
insects have personal traits. The one year I raised a family of these little
guys, it set me up to enjoy them all summer long. I could go outside anytime
during daylight hours and enjoy their fluttering all around the old fashioned
pentas, their favorite nectar plant at my house. I had pots of this plant on
the deck so I always had a close up view of these little beauties.

Just look at what
these little guys, as hungry cats, can do to the white veined dutchmens vines! The year I had so many around was a
wonderful year ... had babies everywhere. The Aristolochia
tomentosa aka wooly pipevine grows on an 8 ft trellis just to the left,
so they had another source of food but they do love the tender leaves of the little
Aristolochia fimbriata vines. In my zone, they are perennial and are grown in dappled sunlight.

in better days ...

after the feast ... :-)

Mary

Featured Answer

roselee z8b S.W. Texas

7 years ago

Below are links to some fascinating Pipevine swallowtail caterpillar stories from a blog that I follow Window on a Texas Landscape for anyone interested:

Another Caterpillar Tale and Cat Watching

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Comments (14)

MissSherry
7 years ago
Hehehe! They can do a number on any type of Aristolochia, can't they Mary? Only bad thing, A. fimbriata is such a pretty little plant, makes such an attractive ground cover (if you can get it to grow big enough or seed all around) you hate to see it eaten up.

There's another cluster of pipevine swallowtail eggs that looked like they were about to hatch yesterday, so I'll be going out to the garden soon to check. If not for that one type of predatory stinkbug, PVS cats would be predator free, at least here, and you could safely leave them to raise themselves. So I'll raise some of them myself, just in case the stinkbug (appropriately named) shows up.

By the way, you haven't violated any forum 'etiquette' - any thread, even though it starts out about one subject, is bound to change some through the different posts in the way normal conversation does. Start a new post, add to someone else's, either way is fine. I can't remember anybody posting about anything that was too far off from the original subject, there's always been a connection.

Sherry
Mary Leek thanked MissSherry
Rhonda
7 years ago
Mary,

That pipevine is just beautiful. I have never seen it before and would have never guessed that it was one. Thanks for teaching me something new today.

Rhonda
Mary Leek thanked Rhonda
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This particular aristolochia vine is small and quite beautiful with the white markings on the leaves. I grow it and I would guess the longest tendril might reach 36" at maturity. It does not climb or twine about a support, as we expect most vines to do and it doesn't put out side growth. Each vine simply sprawls about the surface of the soil. To cover the surface of your growing area, I would suggest planting several vines together. The blooms are very small but look like the blooms on the larger Aristolochia vines. The little seed pods resemble tiny melons and when they mature, dry and pop open, you can see sections of the seed pod, with each section holding several seed. My little vines come back each year from the tubers and they will self seed if left to themselves. Last year my vines were eaten down to nothing but bare vines by pipevine swallowtail cats (the reason I grow them) but given fertilizer and water and a break from the always hungry cats, they will rebound nicely. In my part of the country, I grow them mostly in shade. We had terribly cold temps last winter and many of my little vines still came back, with new seedlings sprouting this spring to fill in the gaps left by vines that died. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with this little vine. ~Mary A. fimbriata - you can see a small bloom near the top right of this photo
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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.
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ily68
7 years ago
I've tried planting that one, but it's just not enough for the cats. Doesn't get too big and it's gone really really fast.
Mary Leek
Original Author
7 years ago
Yes, I agree. These little vines aren't enough for the cats, unless you have a huge bed. Most years they don't bother it and I can enjoy the pretty leaves but the year I had so many Pipevine Butterflies all season long, the wooly got pretty chewed up and once mama pipevine BF discovered the little vines on the ground, it was Katie bar the door! I'd take the cats and put them on the wooly and they'd crawl back down to the little vines. Finally, I just let them have at it. :-) Like Sherry said, it makes a lovely ground cover and provides a good backup food source.

Mary
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
I have A. fimbriata planted as a 'spiller' in almost every pot I have, and I have a lot of big pots with a variety of plants in them! Also have it growing on the ground. Sometimes the caterpillars have to be moved from plant to plant as they eat one pot of fimbriata down to the nubs I carry them to another that has a few leaves left. Also am constantly scattering seeds to grow more. I have a lot of Pipevine swallowtails nectaring in my yard. Yes, they do hang around ... :-)

The flower ...

Sometimes the young caterpillars are a similar color as the flower to make them less visible perhaps ...

An older cat ...
Jacob Berg
7 years ago
I love the Fimbriata, just wish it could grow up here:( oh well, I have my Harris checkerspots:)
Iris S (SC, Zone 7b)
7 years ago
You guys are really doing me in. Just ordered two of these plants.....
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
A. fimbriata is a small vine, but it is possible to grow enough plants to support a fair number of Pipevine caterpillars. I mail ordered a couple of A. tomentosa plants in hopes of having a large vine, but I couldn't keep them going so had to just keep propagating as many of the little fimbriata as I could and move the cats around when they decimated the plant they were on.

My soil is very thin and on top of limestone so I grow a lot of things in pots. Here's one of about a dozen pots I grow fimbriata in ...

Another ...

Transferring the caterpillars to greener pastures ...

I hope this encourages others to grow this little vine.
Mary Leek
Original Author
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
Roselee, I'd not thought to try growing them in big pots. I'll bet they would be lovely spilling over the edge. Their length seems to be restricted by their genetics so they'd make an ideal small vine for a pot!

Jacob, enjoy all the lovely plants you CAN grow that those of us who live further south cannot. Once our summers of heat and humidity kick in, plants that grow so beautifully for you simply give up and die here.

Iris, you will love these little vines. They come back each year and are so easy to care for, given their preferred growing conditions. The seed pods look like tiny watermelons clinging to the little vine and it seems to me just about every little bloom sets a seed pod. Click on Roselee's second photo to enlarge it and look closely ... you can see a dried seed pod that has already split open and just to the right in this same photo, you can see a tiny green seed pod.

Unlike Wooly, which seems to only bloom once in the spring, these little vines bloom over a long season. I want to say they bloom continuously but not absolutely certain of this. Even if only a few dropped seed germinate, it shouldn't take long for a nice patch to develop. Or consider trying Roselee's method of scattering seed in new spots or in some of your pots to expand your plants. This little vine looks so delicate but it's a tough little plant. These little vines require no pruning as their maximum length is about 3 feet. They also recover nicely following a visit from the voracious little pipevine ST cats.

Mary
ily68
7 years ago
It is a very pretty little vine. I have only 1 that survived, and is is small. Going to find more seeds to plant. This year the Polydamas hasn't shown up yet, and the pipevine swallowtail has never come, so I should have a good chance of growing it now. I do have a lot of the Zebra Longwings on the P Inscense passionvine, some of them and the Gulf Fritillary on the Edulis. and surprisingly none on the Corky. I have lots of milkweed for the Monarchs, and plants for the sulfur butterflies. I started growing some Spider flower (Cleome Hasslerana) which is a host plant for 3 butterflies, http://www.butterfliesetc.com/pink-cleome-butterfly-host-plant.html.
HU-339628793
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
My Fimbriata is dying. first too wet, then too dry. its mow in an 8” terra cotta pot but the leaves are allmost all brown. im in NE Florida. i have tomentosa thats doing great. very disappointed with the Fimbriata. Not sure about planting it in the ground
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
2 years ago
I think your Fimbriata would love it in the ground. They form a thick carrot like root and after a cold winter are quick to come back in the spring. When they produce seed I toss it here and there so have it growing in large pots and in the ground. I have LOTS of pipevine swallowtail activity all summer.
four (9B near 9A)
2 years ago
I made several earnest attempts to grow them in ground. Never thrived, ultimately died. I concluded that I had to do only pots.

In pots they did well for a time, then dwindled. Perhaps they prefer dry air (S.W. Texas) to humid (Florida).

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