Clematis tangutica Seeds | Golden Clematis
LATIN NAME: Clematis tangutica
COMMON NAME: Golden Clematis
Plant Profile
Most climbers reach for a trellis with tendrils or twining stems, but Clematis tangutica grabs on with its leaves. Each leaf is divided into several leaflets, and the leaf stalk (the petiole) is itself a slender coil that winds around a wire, a twig, or a neighbour’s stem, hauling the vine upward without a single true tendril. Give it something thin to hold and it will decorate a fence by mid-summer, climbing smoother than a bean.
The nodding, lantern-shaped flowers look like little bells of bright yellow, but what you see as petals are in fact four sepals; clematis has no true petals at all. Inside sit a boss of many yellow stamens and, in the centre, a crowd of unfused carpels that will each ripen into a single seeded fruit, so one flower becomes a whole cluster of later seed.
Like every member of the buttercup family, the plant protects itself with acrid chemistry, and the gardener should know it.
The plant earns its keep twice over the year, in flower and in dried form.
Train it up a post, through a shrub, or over a wall, where the yellow lanterns glow against dark foliage. It is happy in full sun if the roots are shaded, the classic clematis rule of “head in the light, feet in the shade,” and it will climb an old tree trunk without harming the host.
Cut the dried seed heads for the winter vase, where the silvery plumes last for weeks and pair with evergreen stems. Few late climbers give both a long flower run and a dried arrangement, so a single plant supplies the autumn garden and the indoor one.
Science & Biotechnology
The stems and leaves carry triterpene saponins and the glycoside ranunculin, which is broken on crushing into protoanemonin, a volatile oil that blisters skin and numbs the mouth. It is why the vine is grown to look at, not to chew, and why gloves are wise when you prune a large clump or handle cut stems for the vase. The saponins also make the leaves foam in water if crushed, a trait the genus shares with soapwort, and the same chemistry is what discourages deer and rabbits from browsing the vine through the winter when other food is short.
Uses & Benefits
The species comes from cold, dry country on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, which is why it is so much hardier than the big-flowered hybrid clematis of the garden centre. It blooms from mid-summer into autumn and keeps flowering long after most clematis have stopped, earning its place on a late border where little else is open. It was gathered by western plant hunters in Gansu and Qinghai in the late nineteenth century and named for the Tangut people of that region, and the dried bark carries the sharp, orange-peel scent that gives one of its common names. In a cold garden it is among the most dependable clematis, shrugging off frosts that brown the showier types.
Growing from Seed
Because the named forms are worth keeping true, clematis is routinely multiplied by shoot-tip culture, which yields uniform, disease-clean stock from a single chosen mother plant faster than layering alone. The method also guards against the clematis wilt that can sweep through a mixed bed of cuttings. Selected golden forms such as the heavier-flowered garden clones are held this way so the exact petal colour and bloom time are passed on without the drift that seed would bring, and so a single good plant can supply a commercial row.
Give it cool roots and a hold, and it will look after itself.
Set the young plant so the crown sits a few centimetres below the rim of the hole, with the root run shaded by a flat stone or a low ground cover. A warm sunny wall suits the top growth, but the base must stay cool and moist, because a baked crown is what invites the wilt that worries clematis growers.
Move container plants to the garden when they stand twenty to thirty centimetres tall and show several leaf pairs, tying the petioles gently to their support so the coil can take over. Prune lightly after flowering, clearing only the oldest wood to keep the vine open and letting the new stems find the light.
Our Take
Golden clematis is the hardy late bloomer that gives you flowers in autumn and silver in winter, but handle the cut stems with care because of the acrid sap. It belongs with other Ranunculaceae climbers and border plants: the Delphinium, the Aquilegia vulgaris seed, and the PAEONIA SUFFRUTICOSA seeds peony Tree pink.
Related Reading
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