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Portrait of Old man's beard

Nature · Ferns, grasses & other plants

Old man's beard

Deciduous climber · to 20 m · flowers July–September

Clematis vitalba — Ranunculaceae

Old man's beard, also called traveller's joy, is Britain's only native clematis, a rampant woody climber of chalk and limestone hedgerows in southern England. It has no tendrils: it climbs by twisting its leaf stalks around whatever it touches. Its scented greenish-white summer flowers have no petals at all, only four sepals, and each one ripens into a cluster of seeds with long feathery plumes, so that by December whole hedges look hung with grey wool.

How to spot them

  • ▸Great ropes of woody, ridged and peeling stems swagging over hedges and small trees
  • ▸Climbs by twining leaf stalks, never by tendrils or sucker roots
  • ▸Pinnate leaves in opposite pairs, usually five toothed leaflets
  • ▸Fragrant greenish-white flowers with no petals — four downy sepals and a boss of stamens, July to September
  • ▸Silvery-grey masses of plumed seed heads persisting into midwinter — the 'beard'

How to know it

Britain's only native clematis, climbing by twisting its leaf stalks rather than by tendrils

Old man's beard, or traveller's joy.

Its greenish-white scented flowers have no petals at all — only four downy sepals

Old man's beard; petal-less flowers are usual in the buttercup family.

By midwinter its feathery plumed seed heads hang in grey woolly masses along chalk hedgerows

Old man's beard — the plumes are the persistent styles of the achenes.

Gerard's Herball of 1597 gave it a second English name for the pleasure it gave the wayfarer along a hedge

Traveller's joy — Gerard's coinage.

Country boys smoked its porous dried stems, earning it the names smokewood and boy's bacca

Old man's beard.

A calcicole of southern chalk and limestone, it is a serious invasive weed of New Zealand forest

Old man's beard — banned from sale and propagation there.

Quick-fire facts

  • •The only clematis native to Britain, and a member of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae
  • •Climbs by petioles — the leaf stalks themselves twine — with no tendrils, hooks or adhesive roots
  • •The flowers have four petal-like sepals and no true petals; they are scented of almond
  • •The 'beard' is made of achenes, each with a long persistent feathery style that carries it on the wind
  • •John Gerard named it traveller's joy in his Herball (1597)
  • •Strongly calcicole: abundant on the chalk of the North and South Downs, scarce in Scotland and Ireland
  • •Old names include smokewood, boy's bacca and old man's woozard, from smoking the dried hollow stems
  • •In New Zealand it is a declared invasive pest, smothering native forest, and its sale and distribution are prohibited
  • •Sap can blister the skin; like many Ranunculaceae it contains irritant protoanemonin

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources