Clematis virginianaL.

virgin's-bower

WFO wfo-0000610908 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Clematis virginiana, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. a Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 203956359
Clematis virginiana, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. b Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205864369
Clematis virginiana, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. c Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203513823
Clematis virginiana, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. d Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203488297
Clematis virginiana, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. e Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201084775
Clematis virginiana, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. f Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198482139
Clematis virginiana, photographed by Bonnie Semmling
fig. g Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202357764

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,322 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 1,322 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 16 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Clematis bracteata (Moench) DC.
  • Clematis canadensis Mill.
  • Clematis cordifolia DC.
  • Clematis dioica subsp. virginiana (L.) Kuntze
  • Clematis fragrans Salisb.
  • Clematis holosericea Pursh
  • Clematis missouriensis Rydb.
  • Clematis pensylvanica Donn
  • Clematis purshii D.Dietr.
  • Clematis virginiana f. missouriensis (Rydb.) Fernald
  • Clematis virginiana f. virginiana
  • Clematis virginiana var. bracteata (Moench) DC.
  • Clematis virginiana var. missouriensis (Rydb.) E.J.Palmer & Steyerm.
  • Clematis virginiana var. virginiana
  • Clematitis bracteata Moench
  • Clematitis cordifolia Moench

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.