Clematis columbiana, Rocky Mountain Clematis
From Plants of the Southwest nursery, bought in Spring 2018
What came up:
Clematis tangutica, Golden Bell Clematis
I wanted a small vine for part shade that could climb the iron tuteur in the curved garden by the potting bench. I got a Rocky Mountain clematis that likes partial shade, and it's native and it won't get too big, to about 10 feet. A spring bloomer with downward facing, nodding blue-violet bells.
The staff at Plants of the Southwest even talked with me about it, recommending it for shade.
But what came up is a fall blooming, yellow virgin's bower. It's not native. It's Chinese, and it will get 12 feet tall, longer than the Rocky Mountain vine. The flowers in late summer are yellow, recurved, and not what I expected. It was obvious this had been mislabeled.
I looked all over to find pictures of what this should look like in full flower and at full height, and found this lovely photo on one of the blogs I follow:
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| from Dirt Therapy |
But his flowers are golden yellow and prolific. The few I got were pale yellow and sparse. Another photo from the internet showed how tall the vine gets:
But at the end of its second year, in September 2019, mine only produced two pale flowers for a few days, followed by two fluffy seedheads for a week or so. It grew to the top of the tower over summer, but I pruned off any fine growth beyond that and probably most of the flowers too. Pffft.
Its fine foliage was just weedy looking, dried out at the bottom and too small and feathery to look like much on the iron tower.
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| August 24, 2018 |
It's not what I wanted. Not native, not blue flowered, and too tall. Sigh.
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| August 24, 2018 |
September 13, 2019 I took it out. I'm replacing it with a smaller viticella clematis (I've had good luck with viticella in the past). The new vine is Venosa violacea, a purple and white clematis that grows to 10 feet. Striking color, nicer foliage and a better fit.
