TRAVELLER’S JOY— continued. 
It would seem to be in spring and summer that the plant most deserves the 
name of Virgin’s Bower, also bestowed upon it by Gerard, probably intending a 
courtly compliment to Elizabeth ; but it is even more conspicuous in autumn when 
each little shaggy achene in its fruits ends in the long curling white plume which 
has earned such local names as Grey-beards and Snow-in-harvest, as well as the 
more general Old Man’s Beard. 
The acrid juice of the plant causes it to be used as a vesicant by beggars on the 
Continent to produce alarming-looking sores and so excite commiseration, whence is 
derived the French name Herbe am gueux ; and the use of the tough stems to bind 
faggots is probably the origin of such English popular names as Hag-rope (hedge- 
rope), Bindwith, and Withywind. 
Like many other climbing plants whose stems are liable to sharp bends which 
would close small vessels, Clematis has numerous vessels in the wood of its stem with 
large transverse diameters. Country lads have long ago discovered that this structure 
makes the stem “ draw ” well when lit, whence the use of it that has earned it the 
names Smoke-wood and Smoking-cane. 
The name Clematis itself, dating from Dioscorides, is derived from the Greek 
K\T]fjiay klema^ a vine-twig or tendril ; while the specific name Vitalba, coined by 
Dodoens from the Latin vitis alba^ white vine, may well have been suggested by a 
line in Ovid : — 
“ Lentior et salicis virgis et vitibus albis.'* 
Though most of the hundred and seventy species of the genus belong to the 
North Temperate Zone, the European species belong to the south rather than to the 
north of that continent. Our British species does not occur wild either in Scotland 
or in Ireland. It is apparently decidedly calcophile, though there is at present 
considerable doubt as to the interpretation of a plant’s partial or entire restriction 
to calcareous soils. Traveller’s Joy abounds in the hedgerows and other sunny spots 
on chalk or limestone, and when found on clay is a tolerably certain indication that 
the clay in question is either the Chalky Boulder-clay or some other bed in which 
there is a notable admixture of lime. 
