What is the cruel plant?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

May 22, 2003

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The cruel plant or mosquito-trap (Cynanchum ascyrifolium (Franchet & Savatier) Matsumura) is native to Japan and northeastern Asia. There are 100 species of Cynanchum found in temperate and tropical regions of the world. Cynanchum are in the Apocynaceae, the dogbane family; some taxonomists place them in the Asclepiadaceae, the milkweed
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family.

The generic name, Cynanchum, means "dog-strangler". The name was built from the Greek kynos meaning dog and ancho meaning press tight, choke, or strangle, although anchone was the name for a cord used for strangling.

In 1892, Charles F. Millspaugh wrote that one species in the Middle East was "very poisonous, and used...as a means of murder or suicide..." and another species found in the Old World tropics, "...yields excellent fiber for the manufacture of rope...." (American Medicinal Plants, 1892, reprinted 1974, Dover Publications) Perhaps, people merely tied their dogs with the rope and neither poisoned nor strangled them.

Plants in the Apocynaceae generally have unique flowers designed for large insect pollinators—bees or butterflies that can manipulate the flowers. The cruel plant was thought 'cruel' to small insects like flies and mosquitoes. According to Taylor's Encyclopedia of Gardening (Norman Taylor, 1961) the white flowers entrap small insects that have come to feed on the nectar. The trapped insects die or become prey for other insects.

Shigenobu AOKI has two beautiful photographs of the flowers of cruel plant (Cynanchum ascyrifolium) known as kusatatibana in Japan. To view the photographs, click on the link:

http://aoki2.si.gunma-u.ac.jp/BotanicalGarden/HTMLs/kusatatibana.html

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High-quality 6” x 8” ceramic pot
Screens for pot drainage holes
Potting soil
Training wire
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Instruction booklet & figurine
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