White Veined Dutchman’s Pipe | My Gardener Says…

More than a collection of color and collaboration of texture and form, a garden is the base for life. Providers of pollen, donators of nectar, and deliverers of foliage, plants are foundational partners for biodiverse ecosystems. Insects, as well as other wildlife, are direct beneficiaries of the botanical bounty, frequently repaying that bounty with their own pollination and reseeding gifts.

This green gathering of groundcovers all serve as fuel for others in my garden’s seasonal story.

The plant with the petite sky-blue flowers is a Leadwort plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. It meanders through several areas of my garden, dollops of blue attracting small native sweat bees. The bright green, lobed foliage at bottom left of the photo belongs to Gregg’s mistflower, Conoclinium greggii, which is currently not blooming. Its fuzzy, lavender-blue blooms will be available for the late summer/autumn migrating monarchs, as well as for a wide variety of other butterflies and bees. The groundcover with the charming clam-shell, variegated leaves–the majority plant in this particular group–is a White-veined Dutchman’s Pipe, Aristolochia fimbriata, a common non-native host plant for the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly, Battus philenor.

Alongside some dainty pops of blue on the plumbago, the White-veined pipevine feeds Pipevine caterpillars, like the chubby fella below. This year I have enough of the pipe vine that the cats haven’t completely denuded it as they munch their way to adulthood, but they certainly have eaten plenty of leaves to the stems.

Once the caterpillars eat their fill and morph through their various instars, they follow their chemical signals and settle in a place to metamorphize into a different form of themselves. This one strung itself to the limestone just outside the frame of my back door. It traveled far from its feeding place to get to this spot and I wonder: why here, adjacent to the door? It’s an open spot. potentially vulnerable to predators, less hidden than on a plant, like a stem or an under-leaf. Chrysalises are much better camouflaged in the garden than attached to an open wall. Nevertheless, the caterpillar was resolute in its choice, working to moor itself there on its journey to a new, winged self.

The caterpillar also chose to begin changing during a stormy 48 hours; it strung its string, but remained in the J formation through that cooler, wetter period.

In time, the chemical changes happened, the chrysalis formed, and it remained stationary–though not static–for almost two weeks. The chrysalis emitted light and color as it transitioned, sometimes golden, sometimes green, sometimes dark, but always a little different from the day before.

I missed the debut of the adult, having overslept a bit during the premier morning; butterflies emerge with the sun’s rise; gardeners, not always. At 8am, it was there, drying its wings, waiting for the right time to take flight.

The butterfly did fly later that morning, though I’m not convinced it was entirely ready. I bumbled out the door, focused on some back garden chore, and the startled insect winged its way off of the limestone and over the garden, the remaining drops of its successful chemistry experiment scattering in the sunlight.

I’ve left the shell of the transmutation in place, the remnant of caterpillar observable in form, the memory of brilliant butterfly in warm, gauzy colors.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed observing many a Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor, drifting through my garden, blue-tipped wings highlighted by the brilliant Texas sun.

The winged wonders rest in trees and tall shrubs, basking in the sunshine; occasionally, one drifts to the garden, flitting through the plants with strong wing beats, adding its beauty to the local landscape. The host plant for these gorgeous insects are pipevine plants, Aristolochia species; I’ve never grown any myself and I didn’t I know where pipevines resided that might be the nursery for the Pipevine Swallowtails visiting my garden. But in the last couple of years, I noticed several White Veined Dutchman’s pipe, Aristolochia fimbriata in a nearby neighbor’s garden and have assume that recent Pipevine Swallowtails wafting through my garden hail from her Dutchman’s Pipe.

This is one of my new plants, but you can see why a gardener might want this plant in the garden

Aside from its obvious attractive qualities in the garden, A. fimbriata also a fab host plant for both the Pipevine Swallowtail and another butterfly, the Polydamas Swalllowtail, Battus polydamas.

Last fall, dreaming of hosting my own crop of Pipevine Swallowtails, I planted three individual White-veined Dutchman’s pipe in a spot which has become increasingly shady. I wanted something that would handle shade, be summer drought-hardy, and feed some sort of critter–or two.

I think I picked the right plants.

The three pipevines will spread, but I might plant a fourth in the middle to fill in. The small green plants shown here in the middle of the three pipevines are rosettes of Gulf penstemons, which I’ve recently transplanted to another spot. A flock of ceramic birds fill the void.

Cheery green foliage, with spidery markings, the leaves are elegant and eye-catching.

White Veined Dutchman’s Pipe is hardy in zones 7-11; I garden in zone 8b. After our hard freezes this past winter, the pipevines died to their roots, but popped back in spring, ready for a full growing season.

I traveled during the first half of May and when I returned, the caterpillars (none of which I saw prior to the trip) had laid waste to all three plants. Nothing remained but slender limbs of green.

Yum, yum–Dutchman Pipes taste good to Pipevine Swallowtail larvae! Within a few weeks and assisted by some lovely, welcomed rain in June, all three plants have emerged–lush-n-leafy–after providing meals for that first batch of caterpillars.

Dutchman’s Pipe bloom, too! They’re odd little aliens which are a bit shy. You’ll have to peek under leaves to see them.

Despite the muted color scheme, Dutchman pipe flowers evoke the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe.

Toward the end of the first round of larval lunching, there were still a couple of caterpillars, nibbling away.

There wasn’t much of the green stuff left for those last larvae and I don’t know if either ate enough to get to the morphing stage, but some time later, I found this chrysalis in a bucket on my back patio.

How do caterpillars decide where to place their chrysalises? I was about to fill the bucket with water when I saw the chrysalis. Yet another reminder that t’s always good to keep a sharp eye out for insects and the weird spots where they place their homes.

I kept watch for the adult’s emergence, but missed it. However, the adult butterflies are back at it again; the other day, I watched as a female oviposited the next generation.

There are several clusters of eggs on several slender branches. I imagine the larvae will eat most, if not all the leaves, so foliage will have to flush out again.

Despite the ravages that butterfly and moth larvae render leaves they feed upon, I’ve never lost a plant to caterpillar munching madness. The various host plants that I grow always leaf out after a period of rest.

I prefer to use Texas natives when I’m able, but there is no commercially available native Texas Aristolochia. The next best thing is a non-native and A. fimbriata fills this niche nicely. It’s summer-tough, non-invasive, and pretty. What more could you ask for?

One cautious note about pipevines: if you’re interested in attracting the stunning Pipevine Swallowtails, you should avoid planting Giant pipevine, Aristolochia gigantea. This tropical pipevine is too toxic for the Pipevine Swallowtails; the butterflies lay their eggs, the larvae hatch and eat, then die after the first instar.

So if you want this,