Climbing vines, more or less woody. Leaves opposite, slender-petioled, pinnately compound. Flowers cymose-paniculate, our species dioecious, or nearly so. Sepals 4 or 5, valvate in the bud, spreading, petaloid. Petals none. Stamens numerous, spreading; filaments mostly glabrous; anthers short, blunt. Pistils numerous. Achenes 1-seeded. Style long, persistent, plumose. [Greek name for some climbing plant]

About 25 species of very wide geographic distribution. Besides the following, several others occur in the southern and western parts of North America. Type species: Clematis vitalba L.

Leaves 3-foliolate; eastern.

1.

C. virginiana.

Leaves pinnately 5-7-foliolate; western.

2.

C. ligusticifolia.

1. Clematis Virginiàna L. Virginia Virgin's Bower

Fig. 1942

Clematis virginiana L. Amoen. Acad. 4: 275. 1759.

A long vine, climbing over bushes in low woodlands and along fences and water-courses. Leaves glabrous or nearly so, trifoliolate; leaflets mostly broadly ovate, acute at the apex, toothed or lobed, sometimes slightly cordate; flowers white, in leafy panicles, polygamo-dioecious, 8"-15" broad when expanded; filaments glabrous; persistent styles plumose, 1' long or more.

Georgia to Tennessee, northward to Nova Scotia and Manitoba. Leaves rarely 5-foliolate. Ascends to 2600 ft. in Virginia. Woodbine. Traveler's-joy. Love-vine. Devil's-hair or -darning-needle. Wild hops. July-Sept.

Clematis missouriénsis Rydb., of Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, differs in having marginless achenes and in being more pubescent; it has been confused with C. Catesbyana Pursh, of the southern states and may be specifically distinct.

1 Clematis Virgini Na L Virginia Virgin s Bower 284

2. Clematis Ligusticifòlia Nutt. Western Virgin's Bower

Fig. 1943

C. ligusticifolia Nutt.; T. & G. Fl. N. A. 1: 9. 1838.

A trailing and climbing vine, nearly glabrous. Leaves pinnately 5-foliolate, the lower pair of leaflets generally remote from the upper; leaflets oblong or ovate-lanceolate, acute and sometimes acuminate at the apex, rounded or cuneate at the base, toothed, lobed or divided; flowers white, in leafy panicles, 6"-9" broad when expanded, the stamens about equalling the sepals; filaments glabrous; persistent styles plumose throughout, nearly white, 1'-2' long.

Western Nebraska, Missouri, and throughout the Rocky Mountain region, west to the Pacific Coast. Wind-flower. June-Aug.

2 Clematis Ligusticif Lia Nutt Western Virgin s Bo 285