Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A large genus of apetalous exogenous plants, the type and principal genus of the natural order AristolochiaceÅ“, chiefly woody climbers, and very widely distributed.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun birthworts; Dutchman's-pipe

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Many aspects of traditional Chinese medicine, like the use of the herbs aristolochia and liquorice, are potentially harmful.

    Ayurvedic medicines often contaminated by toxic metals, study says 2008

  • Many aspects of traditional Chinese medicine, like the use of the herbs aristolochia and liquorice, are potentially harmful.

    Herbal Legends 2008

  • COLLINS: In fact, there is one that's called aristolochia.

    CNN Transcript Apr 2, 2004 2004

  • C The aristolochia vine grown on the branches of others trees (such as leucaena), to feed caterpillar larvae.

    4 Operating a Butterfly Farm 1983

  • The lung of a long-winded fox is used as a cure for asthma, the yarrow is used to cure jaundice, agaricos is used for blisters, aristolochia (the fruit of which has the form of a uterus) is used for the pains of child-birth, and nettle-tea for nettle-rash.

    Criminal Psychology: a manual for judges, practitioners, and students 1911

  • A delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with views on either side.

    Alone Norman Douglas 1910

  • There was a strange-looking plant with large heart-shaped leaves and curved yellow blossoms ending in a long upper lip that puzzled me much, and it was afterwards that I found its name to be _aristolochia clematitis_.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

  • Few insects can compare with it in beauty, as it hovers over the flowers of the heliotrope, which furnish the favourite food of the perfect fly, although the caterpillar feeds on the aristolochia and the _betel leaf_, and suspends its chrysalis from its drooping tendrils.

    Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon James Emerson Tennent 1836

  • For example, Watson might recognize that the kidney failure in our patient is linked to kidney failure in a patient in Buffalo and another in San Antonio; all three patients, he might inform me, were taking a "natural" weight loss supplement that contained a Chinese herb, aristolochia, that

    Forbes.com: News Matthew Herper 2011

  • Berkeley artist and gardener Marcia Donohue used to have a subtropical aristolochia called "duck vine" whose flowers did actually resemble miniature waterfowl.

    SFGate: Top News Stories home@sfchronicle.com (Joe Eaton 2010

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