CLEMATIS.

CLEMATIS ALPINA (syn Atragene alpina, A. austriaca and A. siberica).—­Europe and North America.  This is a climbing species with bi-ternately divided leaves, and large flowers with four blue sepals and ten to twelve small flattened organs, which are usually termed petals.

C. CIRRHOSA.—­Evergreen Virgin’s Bower.  Spain, 1596.  An interesting, early-flowering species.  The flowers, which are greenish-white, are produced in bunches and very effective.  It is an evergreen species, of comparative hardihood, and flowers well in sheltered situations.

C. FLAMMULA.—­Virgin’s Bower.  France, 1596.  This old and well-known plant is quite hardy in this country.  The leaves are pinnate, and the flowers white and fragrant.  C. Flammula rubro-marginata is a worthy and beautiful-leaved variety.

C. FLORIDA.—­Japan, 1776.  This is a beautiful species, and an old inhabitant of English gardens.  Leaves composed of usually three oval-shaped leaflets, and unusually bright of tint.  The flowers are very large, and pure white.  It should be planted in a warm sheltered corner against a wall.

C. GRAVEOLENS.—­This is a dwarf shrub, with neatly tripinnate leaves, and solitary, strongly-scented yellow flowers of medium size.  A native of Chinese Tartary, and quite hardy.

C. LANUGINOSA.—­China, 1851.  A handsome species, with large purple leaves that are hairy on the under sides.  Flowers pale blue or lilac, very large, and composed of six or eight spreading sepals.  C. lanuginosa pallida has immense flowers, often fully half a foot in diameter.  Flowers in June.

C. MONTANA.—­Nepaul, 1831.  This is valuable on account of its flowering in May.  It is a free-growing species, with trifoliolate leaves on long footstalks, and large white flowers.  C. montana grandiflora is a beautiful variety, having large white flowers so abundantly produced as to hide the foliage.  It is quite hardy and of rampant growth.

C. PATENS (syns C. caerulea and C. azurea grandiflora).—­Japan, 1836.  This has large, pale-violet flowers, and is the parent of many single and double flowered forms.  The typical form is, however, very deserving of cultivation, on account of the freedom with which it blooms during June and July from the wood of the previous year.  It is perfectly hardy even in the far north.

C. VIORNA.—­Leather Flower.  United States.  This is a showy, small-flowered species, the flowers being campanulate, greenish-white within and purplish without.  C. Viorna coccinea is not yet well known, but is one of the prettiest of the small-flowered section.  The flowers, which are leathery as in the species, are of a beautiful vermilion on the outside and yellow within.

C. VITALBA.—­Lady’s Bower, or Old Man’s Beard.  A handsome native climbing shrub, common in limestone or chalky districts, and unusually abundant in the southern English counties.  Clambering over some neglected fence, often to nearly 20 feet in height, this vigorous-growing plant is seen to best advantage, the three or five-lobed leaves and festoons of greenish-white, fragrant flowers, succeeded by the curious and attractive feathery carpels, render the plant one of the most distinct and desirable of our native wildlings flowering in August.