Plants never cease to amaze me. Here in our orchard, Terminal 5, grows a sprawling vine that can get quite large. Interestingly enough, it only pops up on the half of the land where the soil is dry and white with lime. It is very drought tolerant. We don't water them and it hasn't rained...yet they thrive.
You can see here its distribution. Each clump is an individual plant with many stems and difficult to pull out in its entirety due to a deep root system.
It makes for a charming little plant with its heart-shaped leaves and flowers resembling old fashioned pipes, hence the common name. I suspect this to belong to the species Aristolochia foetida or Jalisco Dutchman's Pipe whose range spans much of Mexico. It is not that weedy or invasive in its growth habit so we tend to leave them alone, unless it sprouts too close to our plants in what is known as the "Cactus Corner". I've never seen them anywhere else in the area so it's quite nice to have something special here.
As I passed one specimen, I discovered yet another reason to conserve them.
This is a host plant for caterpillars! Their bright red coloring and spinules don't make this particular caterpillar look too appetizing. And then it also had an osmeterium it reveals when it is disturbed.
That is the orange forked organ that appears near its head. It is said to smell very bad but I've never been close enough to observe (but maybe I'm just more aurally sensitive than olfactory). Even the mere sight of that organ is enough to scare some though. I certainly jumped the first time I saw such a thing on a black swallowtail larva.
Speaking of swallowtails, with a bit of research I discovered this crimson larva to actually be the Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor), native to North and Central America.
My rendition of the adult Pipevine Swallowtail
The larvae actually sequester artistolochic acid from the varied family of compatible host plants, which gets carried on to the adult and egg stages. The acid makes them unpalatable. This reminds me much of the relationship milkweed has with monarch butterflies, among other insects that call that plant its host. Both butterflies also have bright orange coloring that warns potential predators.
That goes to show the amazing relationship plants have, not only with humans, but other animals as well. Every organism has its purpose in the grand scheme of things and we should not deem them useless or insignificant.
