Flowers are horns and fruits are pockets.

Aristolochia is in full bloom in June, and its flowers and fruits are very interesting.

[aristolochia Aristolochia debilis] Aristolochia Aristolochiaceae > > Aristolochia

This species of Aristolochia is widely distributed. According to the description of Flora of China, it is distributed in the southern provinces and central regions. But I have never seen Aristolochia in the wild. All I see are other species of heart-shaped leaves (maybe Aristolochia mandshurica). However, aristolochia is always cultivated in botanical gardens and medicine gardens in colleges and universities.

During the Dragon Boat Festival, I saw Aristolochia in full bloom in the grass garden of a university in Hangzhou. This is a kind of vine, which has a strong climbing ability and wraps up the rattan frame that is more than one person in the grass garden.

The first thing that attracted my attention was the thick leaves of Aristolochia. Aristolochia mandshurica leaves are roughly heart-shaped, but the lower part of the heart seems to have been rubbed into a slender shape.

The leaves are alternate on the vine, and the axils of the leaves are full of flowers with strange shapes. This is probably one of the strangest flowers in the plant world. his perianth forms a tubular structure, with a spherical sac at the base of the tube, a trumpet-shaped head and a twisted structure on one side of the trumpet mouth. It looks like a weird horn.

The mouth of the flower tube shows a dark purple, and the inside is covered with short white hairs. The lower part of the flower tube is yellowish green. So where does his gynophore grow? In that ball-shaped pouch. If you peel the flowers, you can find that they look like this.

Flowers of this shape, with slippery white short hairs on the inner wall, are not insects deliberately trying to make it difficult to pollinate? Aristolochia is such a control freak that insects can not be liberated until the pollen is mature and the short hairs on the inner wall of the flower tube shrink. After pollination is completed, the torsion of the flower tube trumpet will be more intense until the flower tube mouth is completely closed.

The strangeness of Aristolochia is much more than that. When we search for aristolochia in the south and abroad, all kinds of Aristolochia plants are more and more peculiar. By contrast, Aristolochia is very low-key.

[1] By Daderot

[2] By Dick Culbert from Gibsons

There are also Aristolochia mandshurica in the north, such as Aristolochia mandshurica. The color of the flowers is even lower than that of Aristolochia mandshurica.

Back in Hangzhou, I found that some anxious Aristolochia flowers had borne young fruit on the rattan frame. After ripening, the fruit will split into six petals, and it will really become a "pocket".

Aristolochia has always been an important Chinese herbal medicine, with aliases such as Aristolochia mandshurica, Tianxian vine, etc., which sounds like fairy medicine. However, in the cancer incident caused by aristolochic acid at the end of last year, aristolochia and traditional Chinese medicine were again pushed to the forefront, causing extensive discussion and thinking.

No matter what the academic circles think of Aristolochia, it is enough to know that it is poisonous. If you see it in the wild, don't catch it as a wild vegetable.

[1] By Daderot [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

[2] By Dick Culbert from Gibsons, B.C., Canada (Aristolochia chilensis) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

[3] zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aristolochia_labiata.jpg#filelinks

Author: Jiang SB.

Photo: Jiang SB.

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