Virgin’s Bower (*Clematis virginiana*)
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###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Clematis_virginiana%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-08-20.jpg) Photographed August 20.
Our native autumn Clematis, very similar at first glance to the Asiatic [Autumn Clematis (_Clematis terniflora_)](https://reference.florapittsburghensis.com/Ranunculaceae/Clematis/Clematis-terniflora.html) that has made itself at home in our city lots. The leaves, however, are quite different: they are three-parted, with a tendency to be toothed, especially toward the ends of the leaflets. These vines were running rampant through the other flora and up and down a telephone pole along the Montour Trail in Moon Township.
Other common names include Traveler’s Joy and Love Vine.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Clematis_virginiana%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-08-20-3.jpg)
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Clematis_virginiana%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-08-20-1.jpg)
Gray (revised by Fernald) describes the genus and the species:
CLÉMATIS L. Clematis. Sepals (normally 4) valvate in bud, the margins often induplicate. Petals none or small, transitional into stamens. Stamens numerous, with adnate anthers. Carpels numerous in a head, long-styled, in fruit forming achenes. Seeds suspended; raphe dorsal. — Opposite leaved herbs or slightly woody vines, the latter climbing by the bending or clasping of the leaf-stalks. Large genus of temp. reg. {*Clematis*, a name of Dioscorides for a climbing plant with long and lithe branches, from *clema, a shoot*.)
Flowers cymose-paniculate, with white or whitish sepals widely spreading, dioecious, the pistillate flowers with sterile stamens; anthers blunt, in ours at most 4 mm. long; half-woody climbers. § Flammula
Leaflets toothed or dissected, membranaceous to subcoriaceous; sepals 6-12 mm. long; anthers 0.6-1.5 mm. long; achenes pilose or villous-hirsute. Leaves 3 (lower rarely 5)-foliolate.
*C. virginiana* L. (Virginian), Virgin's-bower, Devil's-darning-needle, Herbe aux gueux (Que.). — *Leaves* simply *3-foliolate; leaflets thin*, ovate, and often subcordate, *incisely few-toothed* and somewhat lobed, glabrous or beneath sparingly pilose and glabrate, or permanently and densely pilose beneath in forma *missouriensis* (Rydb.) Fern, (of Missouri); panicles corymbiform, with numerous creamy-white flowers; sepals 6-12 mm. long; anthers 0.6-1.5 mm. long; achenes brown or rufescent, pilose or villous-hirsute. — Low grounds, thickets and borders of woods, Gaspé Pen., Que., to Man., s. to N.S., N.E., Ga., Ala., Miss., La. and e. Kans. July-Sept.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Clematis_virginiana%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-08-20-2.jpg)