WILD CLEMATIS, TRAVELLER’S JOY, old man’s beard, grandfather’s whiskers, bedwine… Clematis vitalba has a multitude of colourful English names. It is a climbing plant, with long, twining stems that ramble through hedges and bushes, often on motorway verges, beside railways or along the edges of woods.
For much of the year, it is unobtrusive, hidden among all the other foliage, though you might catch the sweet scent of its flowers on summer evenings. But in winter, it really comes into its own. The plant’s abundant seedheads, which are greyishwhite and wispy like cobwebs or feathers, frequently cover its supporting hedge or bush, hence the old names that often reference facial hair.
The nature writer Nicola Chester, in her memoir On Gallows Down, writes of wild clematis garlanding hedges like necklaces…
