Dutchman's Pipe

Did you know

• The strange flowers look exactly like 19th-century meerschaum smoking pipes—curved tubes ending in a flared mouth—giving the vine its name across both English and German garden tradition.
• Each flower is a temporary insect prison: it traps small flies inside for 24 hours with backward-pointing hairs, then releases them once they're coated in pollen, in time for the next flower.
• The vast heart-shaped leaves can grow over 10 inches wide and create the most opaque green privacy screen of any North American native vine—Victorian Americans used it to shade entire porches.
• Dutchman's pipe is the only host plant for the rare and beautiful pipevine swallowtail butterfly, whose iridescent blue-black caterpillars feed exclusively on its leaves.
• The genus 'Aristolochia' comes from the Greek for 'best birth'—ancient herbalists believed it eased childbirth, but modern research has found the plants contain dangerous nephrotoxins.

Color meanings

Uses

• Trellis vine
• Privacy screening
• Butterfly gardens
• Heritage gardens