Description Aristolochia clamatitis was rather provocatively described by Professor E.F. Warburg as ?a good abortifacient, only found in England in nunneries, where it is an introduced plant.? It is certainly true that the plant survives on the sites of monastic gardens, and Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, (1996), p. 38, observes that ?the plant clings on amongst the nettles at the ruins of Godstow Nunnery outside Oxford.? In 2008, I sought the plant out myself in a fit of obsession, but it took me more than an hour to find it, blooming in profusion in a wooded ditch beneath one of the convent walls, at least 500 years after it was first planted there. Aristolochia is certainly poisonous, but the shape of the flowers was reminiscent of the human womb and birth canal, making its own ironic appeal to adherents of the Doctrine of Signatures. Like Cuckoo Pint, Birthwort flowers have backwards pointing hairs which help to temporarily imprison flies (attracted by its foetid smell), in order to increase the likelihood of pollination. See also Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman?s Flora, 1975, p. 243, and Lesley Gordon, A Country Herbal, 1980, p. 23. Poem by Giles Watson, 2009. Reading recorded 20th June, 2010.
