Clematis virginiana L.

Devil's darning needles, Virginia bower, Virginia clematis, Virginia virgin's-bower

Climate known 81 photographs Temperate garden plant

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

Summary

Clematis virginiana is a vine of the Ranunculaceae native to North America from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba down to the Gulf of Mexico. The rationale for some of the common names is unclear, as they include examples normally applied to unrelated plants, including twining parasites. The name "Love Vine" also is applied to alleged aphrodisiacs, such as Caribbean species of Cassytha, which are unrelated to Clematis, not being in the family Ranunculaceae.

Text from Wikipedia, “Clematis virginiana”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written. Kept separate from everything derived here.

About the genus · Clematis

Clematis is a genus of about 380 species within the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. Their garden hybrids and cultivars have been popular among gardeners, beginning with Clematis 'Jackmanii', a garden staple since 1862. More cultivars are being produced constantly, mainly of Chinese and Japanese origin.

Text from Wikipedia, “Clematis”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family

Ranunculaceae

Described by

Native to

Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia +40

Wild records

1928 in range· 508 open

At a glance

Warmest month

26°C

Jul, mean day; nights 17 °C (CHELSA)

Rain

1137mm/yr

12 wet months · peak Jun 110 mm (CHELSA)

Light

9–39DLI

mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)

In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person

Grouped as a temperate garden plant by the genus Clematis, which is reliably one kind of plant (archetype table). Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (April to November in the northern hemisphere). Habitat rain 1137 mm a year, wettest June at 110 mm, driest February at 72 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 9 to 39 mol/m²/day. Cold floor -19.7 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Also known as Clematis bracteata (Moench) DC.; Clematis bracteata Moench; Clematis canadensis Mill.; Clematis cordifolia (Moench) DC.; Clematis dioica subsp. virginiana (L.) Kuntze and 16 more.

Cultivation

Grouped as a temperate garden plant by the genus Clematis, which is reliably one kind of plant (archetype table). The table holds no figure for this group, which spans too much for one minimum; the cold floor is the habitat's alone, and no prose comes from the table.

Its year Rain rule: no season, 70% of the rain takes 8 months (April to November in the northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads no season: 70% of the year's rain (813 mm of 1137 mm) takes 8 months, April to November. Mean temperature moves 26.3 °C between the warmest and coldest month. Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: October to May.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 1137 mm a year, wettest June at 110 mm, driest February at 72 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

1137 mm a year at the habitat, 813 mm of it April to November. Wettest month June at 110 mm, driest February at 72 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 874 mm to 1416 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 9 to 39 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 9 to 39 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 8, the highest 90th-percentile month 41).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor -19.7 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is -19.7 °C, the absolute minimum -28.7 °C, about 146 frost nights a year (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 32.0 °C. Monthly means: coldest night -8.7 °C in January (across the envelope cells -14.7 °C to -2.7 °C), warmest day 26.3 °C in July (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: -19.7 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 56 to 62% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 1577 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale

Figures by month

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day °C	-1 / -6–6	1 / -4–8	6 / 2–13	13 / 9–18	19 / 16–23	24 / 21–27	26 / 23–30	25 / 23–29	21 / 19–25	15 / 12–19	8 / 5–13	2 / -3–7
Night °C	-9 / -15–-3	-8 / -13–-1	-3 / -8–2	3 / -0–7	9 / 6–13	15 / 12–18	17 / 15–20	17 / 14–20	13 / 10–16	7 / 4–10	1 / -2–5	-5 / -10–-1
Rain mm	78 / 40–109	72 / 38–106	84 / 50–121	93 / 71–119	104 / 84–128	110 / 87–134	110 / 85–138	103 / 83–126	102 / 87–122	96 / 71–126	95 / 65–121	90 / 48–122
DLI	12 / 10–15	18 / 17–20	26 / 24–27	32 / 30–34	37 / 35–39	39 / 37–41	38 / 37–41	34 / 32–35	26 / 24–29	19 / 16–23	12 / 9–16	9 / 8–13
RH %	62 / 57–65	60 / 56–63	57 / 55–60	56 / 55–57	57 / 55–59	59 / 57–61	59 / 57–62	60 / 58–62	60 / 58–62	59 / 57–61	60 / 58–63	62 / 58–65

Each figure is the median across the 1577 grid cells holding the 1826 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 937:1922 (43.125, -83.875). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum -28.7 °C, 1st-percentile night -19.7 °C, 99th-percentile day 32.0 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 1577 distinct grid cells holding the 1826 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 937:1922 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 43.00_-83.750, lapse-corrected -36 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 208 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeManitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward I., Québec, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., Vermont, West Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia· introduced: Myanmar

Kew's description“climber” · “temperate”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Map marker42.388, -73.296 · in the densest population, 1191 records (62% of those in range)

Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 1928 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 508 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 86 km away. 1 record outside the range (gardens, roadsides, misidentifications) ignored. 102 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km and stay on the map but off the climate.

The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population inside the densest 4° block of the 1928 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Photographs: (c) Tom Norton, some rights reserved (CC BY) (5); (c) Tom Scavo, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3).

Photographs: iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Clematis virginiana, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

VINE PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND RELATIONSHIPS TO CLIMBING MECHANICS IN A FOREST UNDERSTORY

Gregory A. Carter, Alan H. Teramura (1988) · American Journal of Botany

Vine Photosynthesis and Relationships to Climbing Mechanics in a Forest Understory

Gregory A. Carter, Alan H. Teramura (1988) · American Journal of Botany

Photosynthesis in an open field for exotic versus native vines of the southeastern United States

Gregory A. Carter, Alan H. Teramura, Irwin N. Forseth (1989) · Canadian Journal of Botany

The Vascular Flora of the J.T. Nickel Family Nature and Wildlife Preserve, Cherokee County, Oklahoma

Bruce Hoagland, Amy Buthod (2008) · Castanea

THE CLEMATIS VIRGINIANA (RANUNCULACEAE) COMPLEX IN THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

Frederick B. Essig (1990) · Biodiversity Heritage Library (Smithsonian Institution)

Plant Species Associated with a Regionally Rare Hemiparasitic Plant, Pedicularis lanceolata (Orobanchaceae), Throughout Its Geographic Range

Sydne Record (2011) · Rhodora

Nomenclatural transfers and new varieties and forms

Merritt Lyndon Fernald (1937) · Contributions from the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University

Occurrence Download