The Midas Touch, Clematis texensis 'Princess Diana', seedhead, Bad Zwischenahn, Germany
The brightly scarlet or flashingly pink flowering Clematis texensis is native to the Edwards Plateau of west-central Texas, USA. It was first - in the middle of the nineteenth century - described under two different names by two intrepid American botanists and naturalists: Samuel Botsford Buckley (1809-1884) and George Engelman (curiously also 1809-1884). Engelman was primarily an expert on cactusses; Buckley more of a general naturalist. Highly knowledgable about shells, he was also a mineralogist, paleontologist (discovering the fossils of a wonderfully named Zeuglodon, a prehistoric whale), an avid mountaineer (Mount Buckley, NC is named after him) and, of course, a botanist. I suppose he can be forgiven for calling this clematis by the present-day unacceptable 'coriflora'.
The Texas Clematis is also known as the Scarlet Clematis, the Leather Flower, and the more evocative Scarlet Leather Clematis (who doesn't think here of the almost-homonym 'The Scarlet Letter'?). It has four wonderfully red petals formed into an upward pointing bell.
The seedhead which is pictured here reminded me of the Midas Touch, visited upon the king in Greek mythology whose touch turned everything into cold gold, even the people he loved most dearly.
This particular scarlet cultivar is named for 'Princess Diana'. Contemplating the flower and its seedhead, I thought vaguely of scarlet letters but more about how a vibrant life can by a sudden rush of fate be turned into a golden memoy - a memory doing little justice or truth to life lived. But perhaps beautiful memory can be seed for the future...
This photo was taken in the "Park of Gardens" a few kms west of the northern German town of Bad Zwischenahn, just across the border from the Netherlands.
The Midas Touch, Clematis texensis 'Princess Diana', seedhead, Bad Zwischenahn, Germany
The brightly scarlet or flashingly pink flowering Clematis texensis is native to the Edwards Plateau of west-central Texas, USA. It was first - in the middle of the nineteenth century - described under two different names by two intrepid American botanists and naturalists: Samuel Botsford Buckley (1809-1884) and George Engelman (curiously also 1809-1884). Engelman was primarily an expert on cactusses; Buckley more of a general naturalist. Highly knowledgable about shells, he was also a mineralogist, paleontologist (discovering the fossils of a wonderfully named Zeuglodon, a prehistoric whale), an avid mountaineer (Mount Buckley, NC is named after him) and, of course, a botanist. I suppose he can be forgiven for calling this clematis by the present-day unacceptable 'coriflora'.
The Texas Clematis is also known as the Scarlet Clematis, the Leather Flower, and the more evocative Scarlet Leather Clematis (who doesn't think here of the almost-homonym 'The Scarlet Letter'?). It has four wonderfully red petals formed into an upward pointing bell.
The seedhead which is pictured here reminded me of the Midas Touch, visited upon the king in Greek mythology whose touch turned everything into cold gold, even the people he loved most dearly.
This particular scarlet cultivar is named for 'Princess Diana'. Contemplating the flower and its seedhead, I thought vaguely of scarlet letters but more about how a vibrant life can by a sudden rush of fate be turned into a golden memoy - a memory doing little justice or truth to life lived. But perhaps beautiful memory can be seed for the future...
This photo was taken in the "Park of Gardens" a few kms west of the northern German town of Bad Zwischenahn, just across the border from the Netherlands.