>A webcrawler search on "carnivorous plants" turned up Sally & Co. Seeds page,
>an online catalog which lists a "Chinese Fly-Catching Vine" Aristilochia
>deblis, the description of which states (and I paraphrase): "A carnivorous
>plant with long, peculiar, insectivorous flowers." I'm just a novice in this
>hobby, but in all of my reading, I've NEVER come across this cp, and I've
>seen stated repeatedly that pollination and fertilization are evolutionary
>separate functions in cps, i.e. you'd be more likely to find a 30' man-eating
>Drosera than you would an insect-eating flower. Can somebody set me straight
>on this?
Yes, _Aristolochia_ (a fairly large genus of Aristolochiaceae) is able to
catch and retain small animals in the flowers for some time, and yes, the
flowers are "long, peculiar". But this serves (as you have insinuated
already quite correctly) the purpose of pollination, and the insects & c.
are released alive after a while to be able to visit other flowers of the
same species. So neither is this plant carnivorous nor are the flowers
insectivorous. The plant does not (normally) kill its "prey" nor does it
digest or absorb anything but its own pollen (or rather pollen introduced
by the caught insects from other flowers of the same species). So it is not
a fault to have an _Aristolochia_ in the collection but please remove the
label "carnivorous".
Kind regards
Jan