150 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 



nests with. It is a bonny plant, the traveller's joy, and 

 deserves its honourable and refreshing name ; but as a 

 garden plant it is valueless in comparison to the plant here 

 figured, the Clematis flammula of Linnaeus, which has a neater 

 growth, and in the days of its exuberant flowering emits a 

 fragrance so rich and powerful as to overpower all other of 

 the autumnal odours of the garden. Both plants are common 

 in Italy, and their tender shoots are gathered by the Italian 

 peasant and boiled as a pot-herb — a service they are not 

 called upon to render with us, because, in truth, our gardens 

 supply us with better vegetables, albeit they have no 

 Italian climate to help them. 



The sweet clematis is sufficiently hardy to endure the 

 ordinary winters of Britain, but severe winters are likely to 

 prove fatal to it, and it is always in danger more or less 

 when planted in situations where it is exposed to keen 

 winds or shade or damp. It is a sunshine plant, requiring 

 an open but somewhat sheltered location, and a good depth 

 of fertile, well-drained soil. It is often seen resting on the 

 roof of a shed, covering a gable or gateway, or clothing a 

 trellis with luxuriant masses of its cloudlike leafage and 

 foamy flowers. But nowhere does it appear with greater 

 advantage than when on a rockery, where, as Mr. Moore 

 happily expresses it in his work on " The Clematis, " 

 " being allowed to assume a decumbent habit, its myriads 

 of pure-white blossoms seem to pour down the declivities 

 like masses of drifting snow, at the same time embalming 

 the air with their fragrance." 



As a slender climber of perennial duration it is adapted 

 for many purposes in the garden, and the mention of one 

 of them will tend, in a word, to enlarge the theme. It is 

 often planted in beds with the new hybrid clematis, of 



