A somewhat rare plant in cultivation this species plant from S.C.America (Texas) bears urn shaped flowers between the months of June and September. This plant is a member of the 'viorna' family and has the most wonderful red flowers which narrow towards the tips before recurving outwards. The red colour is marginly carried on into the inside of the sepals on this example where it meets the protruding pale yellow anthers.
This plant always gains a lot of admiring looks when seen by the ordinary public at some of the larger flower shows where it can often be seen being displayed on the British Clematis Socitey stand.
Now it must be stressed that there have been many forms of this plant over the years some bearing shorter more stubby flowers and others not having the red on the inside of the sepals. The plant is termed semi-herbaceous as the early growth tends not to climb whereas the taller growth does make an attempt to cling on. It generally reaches a height of between 8-10' (240-300 cm) before producing the 1-2 cm wide and 3-4 cm long flowers.
The plant bears blue-green pinnate leaves with the lower leaves sometimes ternate or entire, or occasionally two or three lobed (bit of a mixture).
It is a pruning group 3 (hard prune) as its growth dies in the winter and reshoots from the base. I believe their has been some confusion over the years as to this plants hardiness and because of this I have tried to give it some protection during the colder months. Last winter I decided that it would have to survive the elements on its own and it happily survived -5 deg C with no complaints possibly going some way to proving its sometimes advertised zone 4 hardiness rating. Unfortunately this plant has one vice to which it carries on to many of its hybrids and this is that it suffers heavily from mildew (white powdery deposits on the leaves and stems). It is thus imperative that it is given either a nice airy position in the garden and plenty of water or alternatively it is sprayed with a systemic fungicide every couple of weeks (or both). Just to show how variable this plant can be, the picture on the right is a flower from a seed grown clematis (supplied from the British Clematis Society). This type has much shorter 'stubby' flowers and the tips barely open at the end.