Clematis tibetana - Tibetan Clematis

Tibetan Clematis is a sprawling or more or less scrambling shrub up to 2 m tall, sometimes more. Flowers are borne in leaf-axils, solitary or 2-3, rarely 5, together on a short or long peduncle, nodding bell-shaped with slightly or rather widely spreading sepals, yellow or greenish-yellow, flushed or spotted with rusty-brown, bronze or purplish-brown on the exterior, the filaments green or reddish. Flower-cluster-stalks are 0.3-7 cm long. Bracts are like the leaves but smaller and generally with only 3-5 leaflets. Flower-stalks are 2.8-14 cm long, slender. Sepals are lanceshaped to elliptic, 1.6-3.5 x 0.7-1.4 cm, pointed to shortly tapering, thick and leathery, hairless on the outside except along the margin, densely and silky velvet-hairy on the inside. Filaments are 4-10 mm long; anthers 1.5-3.5 mm long. Styles are up to 3-5 cm long in fruit. Stems are green when young, often tinged with reddish-purple, finely velvet-hairy to nearly hairless. Leaves are pinnate, with 5-7 leaflets; leaflets glaucous, thick and rather leathery, narrow-lanceshaped to lanceshaped or elliptic or ovate, 1.3-5 x 0.4-2 cm pointed or somewhat pointed, entire or with 1-3 lobes in the lower half, rarely more or less palmately lobed, hairless or sparsely velvet-hairy above, velvet-hairy or sometimes nearly hairless beneath. Tibetan Clematis is found in W. China to W. & Central Himalaya, at altitudes of 3300-5000 m. Flowering June-September.