Aristolochia cretica - Cretan Birthwort
Phylum: Magnoliophyta - Class: Equisetopsida - Order: Piperales - Family: Aristolochiaceae
Above: The saxaphone-shaped flowers of Cretan Birthwort
The plants of the Aristolochiaceae family attract their pollinators (flies) by exuding a strong smell from their flowers which are typically saxaphone-shaped. When the flies crawl down into the flowers, they are trapped by the hairs that surround the 'mouth' and remain, crawling around, inside the flower overnight. By the following morning the hairs have withered and the flies, now covered with pollen, are able to escape and move on to other flowers and so complete the pollination cycle.
Cretan Birthwort is relatively rare and not easy to find. Its habitats are shady and rocky places and the plant and flowers are well disguised by surrounding grass and other plants.
Hairs surround the mouth of the flower of Cretan Birthwort
Aristolochia cretica is endemic to Crete and Karpathos. It blooms from the end of February to the beginning of July.
The plants shown on this page were photographed in Crete in early April.
Please Help Us: If you have found this information interesting and useful, please consider helping to keep First Nature online by making a small donation towards the web hosting and internet costs.
Any donations over and above the essential running costs will help support the conservation work of Plantlife, the Rivers Trust and charitable botanic gardens - as do author royalties and publisher proceeds from books by Pat and Sue.