The MGS Forum
Plants for mediterranean gardens => Climbers => Topic started by: Alisdair on July 16, 2011, 08:16:03 AM
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Aristolochia gigantea has I think the largest flowers of any climber grown in mediterranean climates, up to about 40cm across. The spectacular flowers have the bonus of an attractive faintly lemony scent (not to be confused with the vile stench of its rather similarly named cousin A. grandiflora). We grow it in our southern Greek garden on a high south-facing wall. It is extremely strong-growing, really quite a strangler, apparently reaching up to 30 metres in the wild - we have to cut it back ruthlessly each year to keep it reasonably within bounds. I have also seen it growing in the south of France and Spain, and Oron Peri has it in his Israel garden.
We irrigated it originally. It is now no longer watered, but I suspect that its greedy roots may have reached over to tap the water that a lime tree gets, growing a few metres away.
The little white flower is of a very appealing climber we grow with it, Pandorea jasminoides 'Red Eyes'.
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A much more modest Aristolochia is this little chap, Aristolochia sempervirens:
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The "mouth" of the flower is only about a centimetre across, if that. It grows naturally in the "wild" part of our Greek garden, and may possibly be a food plant for the caterpillars of the swallowtail butterfly - a North American swallowtail species is known as the Pipevine Swallowtail because it feeds only on aristolochias. Worth encouraging for the flowers, modest, but appealing in their odd way and very much worth a close look. It grows wild too in Italy and has been introduced to the south of France.
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Another Aristolochia is A. chilensis, endemic to Chile, you can find it from the south part of the Atacama Desert (25º lat South) down to Santiago surroundings (33º lat South), mainly in very sunny stony areas. (Photo: Francisca Cornejo).
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And greetings to the forum's first member in Chile!
Very interesting-looking, Eduardo, thanks; coming from the Atacama among other places it looks as if it will be happy in our Greek garden, so thanks to your message I have now ordered seeds of it (the seed company also had seeds of Argylia radiata syn. canescens, which looks as if it will be able to stand the fiercest drought that the Mediterranean can throw at it, so I have also ordered seeds of that....)
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An even more modest one is A. rotunda, which grows wild in somewhat shaded areas here in Halkidiki. It is easily recognised by the brown-red 'lip' of the flower bending over the opening of the tube. The leaves are, as the name says, round, or oval. It does not seem to climb.
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I would like to" second" Alisdair's welcome to Eduardo from Chile. How good to know, that through the forum, we can be in touch with members from the more far flung parts of the world. :)
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Yes me too. Hi Eduardo. I have tried growing South American Aristolochias from seed over the years and produced some small plants which eventually died out on me. I think they would have been better in a dry border which I don't have rather than pots that are too small for them. Whilst in Catalonia I did notice this one which I think is likely to be South American but I didn't see a label. Can anyone name it?
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Looks like Aristolochia fimbriata, from the East side of South America.
Oron - who is hot on Aristolochias, may disagree!
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Have to give a mention to our local native species, Aristolochia baetica. Another good foodplant for the butterfly and a similarly unassuming but subtly charming species. Heart-shaped, sometimes slightly glaucous leaves; very drought-hardy; a nice thing to allow to scramble through the lower branches of Lentiscs, Quercus etc, or allow to froth up into a small shrubby groundcover.
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Good thought, Marilyn (and great to meet you last week on Mallorca!).
Around our Greek garden Aristolochia longa grows wild, scrambling about in the same sort of way. One study (click here (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1570-7458.1994.tb01794.x/abstract) to see it) found it to be an even more useful caterpillar food than A. baetica, because of its faster young growth and apparently greater nutritional value.
As you can see from the picture, it's a curious rather than a beautiful plant!
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Hello Alisdair, thanks for the info; good to meet you too. I hope it will be the first of many such meetings for me!
Lovely photo, I have to say I find most curious plants very beautiful. It is one of my many, many particular plant passions - the "weird" ones :) I have not seen A. longa here in our garden but it may exist elsewhere in the Algarve, will have to research that.
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Two more for you, Marilyn, both seen on our MGS trip to SW Turkey in spring last year: the endemic Aristolochia lycica, and then Aristolochia hirta.
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You had more luck with your photo of A. hirta than I had, Alissair, I like these strange plants as well a lot. Here is another photo of A. lycica from the same trip
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You've got the lycica flower so much better than I did, Jorun!
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John's plant is Aristolochia fimbriata, NOT a climber. Some forms washed pewter and silver all over are simply fabulous.
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Goodness me! What an unfortunate-looking creature the A. hirta is... A. lycica I find very charming though. Would I be right in thinking its leaves are actually the less obvious ones in the picture, i.e. the heart-shaped, marbled ones?
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No, it actually has those striking arrow-shaped leaves, so it's identifiable even without the flowers.
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And did you see this big chap when we were at the Soller Botanic Gardens on Mallorca, Marilyn? Aristolochia littoralis, syn. A. elegans, a close relative of A. gigantea but a bit smaller and more clearly lobed. Lindsay said that quite a few people in Spain grow it.
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I did indeed! What a stunner. Hope to fit one of those into the exotic patch over here. :)
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Good evening!
I want to introduce myself as an Aristolochia enthusiast from Germany and got really caught by the awesome oddities presented in this forum.
It's a pity there are so many hardy mediterranean Aristolochia species nobody cultivates or has ever heard of. Even on the smallest isles like the Egadian islands, Malta, Menorca, Samos and Corsica there are breathtaking endemic species of whose ecobiology there is almost nothing known about.
Currently A. bianorii is flowering in my greenhouse (don't be confused by the A. rotunda label, it belongs to another plant), an endemic species from Mallorca and A. paucinervis, an absolutely lovely and hardy species from southern Spain.
Warm regards,
aristoflora
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Welcome, aristoflora! And thanks very much for those pictures. I hope you'll show us more in the future, as they flower.
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Thanks for welcoming - and of course I will share more, certainly.
Today some more hardy species started to flower :D ... the rare Aristolochia clusii from Puglia and Sicily as well as Aristolochia pallida from mediterranean France!
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Another Aristolochia, A. cretica, seen in a rocky area in Crete a couple of years ago. The plant is sprawling, and the flowers are quite large.
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3883/15243391356_6a91ee8db0.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/pe1nbm)
_DSC8710 Aristolochia cretica.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/pe1nbm) by Jorun Tharaldsen (https://www.flickr.com/photos/46063510@N03/), on Flickr
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Thanks for the photos.
Those are plants I have always wondered about but have never seen.
It will be interesting to see more from your collection
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As far as I'm concerned you have a very high chance to see them - in Germany the only species is A. clematitis, whereas in Greece there are more than 5 or 6 ones + 2 endemic.
Regards,
aristoflora
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Yes, you are right. It just means getting out of the house and going to some forest or other at the right time of the year.
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Hi thanks for the message.
I am the one who has never seen these plants and would find it difficult to find them.
Others who live near forests or are regular hikers probably could help you.
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Fleur has just referred me to this fascinating thread: I discovered that what I thought was a morning glory was in fact Aristolochus baetica! Identified by Hilary, thank you, in the Plant ID forum. Here are the photos I took, it is a lovely thing (and thankfully, no sign of the 'rotting meat' smell I read about!). The vernacular name Dutchman's pipe is wonderfully evocative.