''Clematis virginiana'' (also known as devil's darning needles, devil's hair, love vine, traveller's joy, virgin's bower, Virginia virgin's bower, wild hops, and woodbine; syn. ''Clematis virginiana'' L. var. ''missouriensis'' (Rydb.) Palmer & Steyermark ) is a vine of the

Ranunculaceae Ranunculaceae (buttercup or crowfoot family; Latin "little frog", from "frog") is a family of over 2,000 known species of flowering plants in 43 genera, distributed worldwide. The largest genera are ''Ranunculus'' (600 species), ''Delphinium' ...

(buttercup family) native to

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba down to the Gulf of Mexico. The rationale for some of the common names is unclear, as they include examples normally applied to unrelated plants, including twining parasites (e.g. "devil's hair" for ''

Cuscuta ''Cuscuta'' (), commonly known as dodder or amarbel, is a genus of over 201 species of yellow, orange, or red (rarely green) parasitic plants. Formerly treated as the only genus in the family Cuscutaceae, it now is accepted as belonging in the ...

''). The name " Love Vine" also is applied to alleged aphrodisiacs, such as Caribbean species of ''

Cassytha ''Cassytha'' is a genus of some two dozen species of obligately parasitic vines in the family Lauraceae. Superficially, and in some aspects of their ecology, they closely resemble plants in the unrelated genus ''Cuscuta'', the dodders.Web ...

'', which are unrelated to ''Clematis'', not being in the family

Description

This plant is an aggressively growing vine which can climb to heights of by twisting leafstalks. The leaves are opposite and pinnately compound, trifoliate (3 leaflets) that have coarse unequal teeth on the margins. It produces small dull white flowers of width from July to September that are faintly sweetly fragrant; sometimes dioecious so that there are separate staminate (male) and pistillate (female) plants. The male plants are a little showier in flower and don't bear seed. The dry fruit is an achene with long hair as silvery gray feathery plumes attached in late August into November. It grows on the edges of the woods, moist slopes, fence rows, in thickets and on streambanks. It grows in full sun to light full shade and is very adaptable to many soils from sandy to clay, dry to draining wet, and acid to alkaline with pH range of 6.0 to 8.5. It has a deep but sparse, fibrous root system that makes it hard to transplant.(2.) Good for USDA hardiness zones of 3 to 8. Virgin's Bower is not commonly planted in gardens and landscapes in most places. It is sold by a good number of native plant nurseries and some specialty and large conventional nurseries. What is usually sold at most every conventional nursery or garden center is the similar sweetautumn clematis, ''Clematis terniflora'', from Japan that is much more rampant growing, that bears heavier clouds of white flowers with a stronger fragrance, that has simple leaves not compound with 3 leaflets, that as one plant self-sows around a lot, and becomes an invasive plant when escaping cultivation in North America. It is a larval host of the clematis clearwing moth.

Description

References

Further reading