Old man's beard
Clematis vitalba
Family · Ranunculaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The woody climber that smothers whole hedges and leaves them covered in silky white plumes in winter, like beards. It is one of the plants that most changes a hedge's silhouette between August and December.
Oak woods · Roadsides and waste ground · Streams and ditches · Walls and rocks
Also known astraveller's joy, wild clematis
How to tell it
It climbs by twisting its leaf stalks around a support, not with tendrils. A compound leaf of five leaflets with a barely toothed margin. Greenish white flowers without petals, with many stamens, sweetly scented. In autumn, plumes of white threads that last until January.
What it is confused with
Fragrant clematis
Clematis flammula
Both climb and both make plumes. The southern one has smaller, narrower leaflets, often divided again, and smells intensely of jasmine; old man's beard has larger leaflets and a faint smell. Both burn skin.
What it is for
None
The fresh sap contains protoanemonin and raises blisters on the skin; beggars used it deliberately to make sores, which gave it its Spanish name. The dried stems were used as ropes and baskets.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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