Flora of North America species comparison

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Clematis vitalba

evergreen clematis, old-man's beard, Traveler's-joy, Traveler's-joy clematis, white virgin's-bower
Stems

climbing with tendril-like petioles and leaf-rachises, to 12 m. Leaf blade pinnately 5-foliolate;

leaflets cordiform, 8 × (2-)3-5(-6) cm, margins entire to regularly crenate or dentate;

surfaces abaxially minutely pubescent on veins, adaxially glabrous.
Inflorescences

axillary and terminal, (3-)5-22-flowered cymes.
Flowers

bisexual;

pedicel 1-1.5 cm, slender;

sepals wide-spreading, not recurved, white to cream, elliptic or oblanceolate to obovate, ca. 1 cm, length ca. 2 times width, abaxially and adaxially tomentose;

stamens ca. 50;

filaments glabrous;

staminodes absent;

pistils 20 or more.
Achenes

nearly terete, not conspicuously rimmed, densely pubescent;

beak ca. 3.5 cm.

Clematis vitalba
Phenology Flowering summer (Jun–Aug).
Habitat Roadsides, waste ground, secondary growth
Elevation 0-100 m (0-300 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
ME; OR; WA; BC; ON; native to Europe; n Africa [Introduced in North America]
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Clematis vitalba is naturalized in only a few sites in eastern North America and northwestern Oregon to the Puget Sound.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 3.
Parent taxa Ranunculaceae > Clematis > subg. Clematis
Sibling taxa
C. addisonii, C. albicoma, C. baldwinii, C. bigelovii, C. catesbyana, C. coactilis, C. columbiana, C. crispa, C. drummondii, C. fremontii, C. glaucophylla, C. hirsutissima, C. lasiantha, C. ligusticifolia, C. morefieldii, C. occidentalis, C. ochroleuca, C. orientalis, C. pauciflora, C. pitcheri, C. recta, C. reticulata, C. socialis, C. tangutica, C. terniflora, C. texensis, C. versicolor, C. viorna, C. virginiana, C. viticaulis, C. viticella
Name authority Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 1: 544. (1753)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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