Clematis orientalis - Oriental Clematis

Oriental Clematis is a climbing or scrambling shrub up to 8 m tall, usually forming a tangled mass of slender, ridged, greyish to whitish-green stems, sometimes purplish-red, initially hairless or sparsely velvet-hairy but soon hairless. Flowers are borne in leaf-axils, in many-flowered dichasia, rarely reduced to 3 flowers; yellowish to greenish-yellow, sometimes reddish- or brownish-purple externally, with purplish-red to maroon filaments and yellow anthers. Sepals are widely spreading and reflexed at maturity, with flowers hanging, looking down. Flower-cluster-stalks are 0.5-11.5 cm long, hairless or velvet-hairy; bracts and bracteoles pinnate to unifoliolate. Flower-stalks are 1.5-5 cm long. Sepals are lanceshaped to elliptic, 8-21 x 3-7 mm, pointed or nearly so, moderately to sparsely velvet-hairy outside and densely silky-velvet-hairy inside. Filaments are 2-7 mm long; 1.5-4.5 mm long. Styles are 2-5 cm long in fruit. Leaves are pinnate with 5-7 leaflets, sometimes double-compound. Leaflets are glaucous, leathery, lanceshaped to oblong or occasionally linear, 1.6-5 x 0.1-3.5 cm, entire but usually trilobed, unevenly bilobed, or bearing smaller tooth-like lobes, especially below; blunt to pointed, velvet-hairy on both surfaces, rarely hairless above. Oriental Clematis is found in Ukraine to N. China and Himalaya, at altitudes of 400-3800 m. Flowering: July-August.