Aristolochia californica

$6.60$9.70

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Dutchman’s Pipe

This robust, durable, rhizomatous vine will serve to knit your garden’s shrubs and trees together into loose thickets or attractively cover a trellis or fence with rope-like stems to 12 ft. in length. But it’s most noteworthy feature is its odd, bulbous, 1-1/2 inch flowers that appear in winter and spring, dangling from naked stems, and resembling a fanciful Dutchman’s pipe.

Nice as a small-scale groundcover under oaks or with coffeeberry, spicebush, and pink-flowering currant. In California habitat gardens, this vine provides color, a larval food source of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly, and flowers whose color attract fungus gnats that act as pollinators.

Lifeform: Perennial

Sun: Part Shade, Shade

Water: Dry, Light, Moderate

Soil: Clay, Loam, Sand

Other:

 

Container

D-16-O, D-16O, D-16, D-40

Ecological Value

Dutchman's Pipe is an important larval food source of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly.

Historical Uses

The Coast Miwok made a decoction to treat colds.

Distribution

Endemic to CA alone

Elevation

Between 0 and 1500 feet

Communities

Foothill Woodland, Chaparral, Mixed Evergreen Forest

Habitat

Moist shady hillsides, strembanks