Clematis vitalbaL.

Old man's beard

WFO wfo-0000610926 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Clematis vitalba, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. a Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202960886
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. b Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204580331
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. c Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203425209
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. d Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203424217
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. e Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203548950
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Rachel Webster
fig. f Rachel Webster, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202966968
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202758324
Clematis vitalba, photographed by Fabien Piednoir
fig. h Fabien Piednoir, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 201961457

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 = 1,958 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 1,958 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 22 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.

  • Anemone vitalba (L.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Clematis bannatica Schur
  • Clematis bellojocensis Gand.
  • Clematis crenata Jord.
  • Clematis dumosa Gand.
  • Clematis dumosa Salisb.
  • Clematis odontophylla Gand.
  • Clematis pilosa Dulac
  • Clematis scandens Borkh.
  • Clematis sepium Lam.
  • Clematis taurica Besser ex Nyman
  • Clematis transiens Gand.
  • Clematis vitalba var. angustiloba Schur
  • Clematis vitalba var. angustisecta Gremli
  • Clematis vitalba var. bannatica Wierzb. ex Rchb.
  • Clematis vitalba var. cordata Schur
  • Clematis vitalba var. integra DC.
  • Clematis vitalba var. simplicifolia Godet
  • Clematis vitalba var. syriaca Boiss.
  • Clematis vitalba var. timbali Drabble
  • Clematitis vitalba (L.) Moench
  • Viorna clematitis Garsault

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.