Sweet Smelling Surprise

I was mowing in the lower garden on Labor Day (a fitting activity for the day, but hardly a "holiday" from work for me), and as I rounded a corner I received a momentary sensation of being immersed in honey.  I didn't stop immediately, but on the second round, when I was struck again at the same corner with a sweet scent, I hit the brakes and looked around.   There, draping over ‘Double Red’ Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus), were these little white flowers that were not supposed to be there.  

These are, of course, a Sweet Autumn Clematis (Clematis paniculata or C. ternifolia, whatever it is now), which self-seeded itself somewhere next to this trellis and grew unnoticed until now.  This trellis is flanked on either end by two Wisteria vines, which provide both color and a great fragrance each Spring, but in September they're a bit less noticeable, merely serving as a green window to view farther parts of my garden.  The growth of the Wisteria on that end is so thick that I couldn't easily find the Clematis vine source.

The dilemma now, of course, is whether to leave the Clematis there or to move or destroy it.  C. paniculata seems to grow very well here in this climate, and if I leave it here, it may eventually strangle the Wisteria ('Amethyst Falls’) on that end, and the adjacent Rose of Sharon.  I have two other C. paniculata, so one could argue that I've got plenty of it in my garden, but on the other hand, I'm not sure you can ever have too much of that vanilla-scented vine in an otherwise dreary August garden.  'Amethyst Falls' is not nearly as scented in the Spring as the Wisteria sinensis on the other end of the trellis, but it does rebloom for me and it is more dependable in late freezes than the W. sinensis.   

Decisions, decisions.  Are there ever any end to them in the garden? Can I hope that the Wisteria will keep the Clematis in check, allowing each year only these few delightful sprigs of scent to pull me into the shade on a hot day?

White Tower

My Sweet Autumn Clematis bloomed in September this year instead of late August, keeping me waiting a bit for the annual wrapup of fragrancy in my garden, but bloom it finally did.   I worried about its health all through the spring, but it nevertheless returned to sweeten the September air.

Although most of the summer it merely provides iron-clad green foliage, and after flowering silvery, plume-like seed heads will decorate it, every gardener should grow Sweet Autumn Clematis merely for the few weeks of unmatched fragrance it provides.  But talk about your confused Latin nomenclature!  Sweet Autumn Clematis has been variably listed, and can still be purchased as Clematis terniflora, C. paniculata, C. maximowicziana or C. dioscoreifolia.  The species most commonly grown in the United States, and listed by the USDA as C. terniflora, is native to Japan, although one source says that C. paniculata is a separate but identical species native to New Zealand. 

Whatever you want to call it, I grow Sweet Autumn Clematis on an 8 foot tall wire cylinder in the center of my garden, pictured above as taken on a recent misty morning.  I question the oft-repeated information that C. terniflora is hardy to Zone 4, because my history with the plant has been to grow one, lose one, have a volunteer come up in another spot, and then had that volunteer cover the wire tower for three years running until this past winter, admittedly a bad one, when it was killed back to the ground.  I waited patiently this spring, hoping to see signs of life and knowing that clematis often take some time to put leaves on their seemingly dead vines, and just as I was about to give up and was ready to find and plant a new one, some nice green shoots popped up from the ground in the center of the tower. Luckily for me and my garden, Sweet Autumn Clematis grows 20 feet in a single season and blooms on new growth, and it recovered 2/3rds of the trellis again before blooming this year.  In the Flint Hills, it seems to be completely free from disease and the flowers, though small at one inch across, are so fragrant with a rich vanilla scent that this single vine perfumes my entire garden for weeks.  To stand downwind of this central white pillar is to overdose on the scent of heaven.

Although I understand that the Internet is not always a reliable source, it sometimes pays to do a little reading anyway, and in my readings about this vine, I discovered that clematis is in the buttercup family (a neat little factoid for cocktail parties that I never attend anyway) and was called "pepper vine" by Western pioneers and used as a pepper substitute since true black pepper was a rare and expensive commodity for them.  I don't know which clematis would have been carried on the wagons westward, but the entire genus supposedly contains essential oils and compounds that irritate the skin and mucous membranes and can cause bleeding into the gastrointestinal tract if ingested in large amounts.  Thankfully, since I don't like black pepper anyway and the long-suffering Mrs. ProfessorRoush has indulged me by limiting its use in her cooking, I won't be tempted, come the Revolution, to try this dangerous substitute.

It just occurred to me that I've blogged on two white fall-blooming plants in a row.  Maybe I should start a White Garden and create a prairie Sissinghurst out here in the middle of Kansas.  What a fantasy, me and Vita (Sackville-West), gardening together at last.