Clematis brachiataThunb.

traveler's-joy

WFO wfo-0000609598 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Clematis brachiata, photographed by Mahomed Desai
fig. a Mahomed Desai, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 205735902

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 20 botanical countries

Regions where Clematis brachiata is native: Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Cape Provinces, Chad, Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Free State, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Senegal, Zambia, Zimbabwe AngolaBotswanaCameroonCape ProvincesChadCongoEswatiniEthiopiaFree StateKenyaKwaZulu-NatalLesothoMadagascarMalawiMozambiqueNamibiaNorthern ProvincesSenegalZambiaZimbabwe
Native distribution of Clematis brachiata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Angola ANG AFRICA
Botswana BOT
Cameroon CMN
Cape Provinces CPP
Chad CHA
Congo CON
Eswatini SWZ
Ethiopia ETH
Free State OFS
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Lesotho LES
Madagascar MDG
Malawi MLW
Mozambique MOZ
Namibia NAM
Northern Provinces TVL
Senegal SEN
Zambia ZAM
Zimbabwe ZIM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 273 in flower of 535 examined

Proportion of examined Clematis brachiata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 3 8 38% 14% to 69%
Feb 9 10 90% 60% to 98%
Mar 67 74 91% 82% to 95%
Apr 164 217 76% 69% to 81%
May 16 125 13% 8% to 20%
Jun 4 54 7% 3% to 18%
Jul 4 22 18% 7% to 39%
Aug 4 16 25% 10% to 50%
Sep 1 3 too few examined
Oct 1 5 20% 4% to 62%
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Clematis brachiata observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 273 of 535 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 19 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Clematis biloba Steud.
  • Clematis brachiata Ker Gawl.
  • Clematis brachiata var. burkei Burtt Davy
  • Clematis brachiata var. oweniae (Harv.) T.Durand & Schinz
  • Clematis comosa DC.
  • Clematis kerrii Steud.
  • Clematis massoniana DC.
  • Clematis orientalis f. massoniana (DC.) Kuntze
  • Clematis orientalis subsp. brachiata (Thunb.) Kuntze
  • Clematis orientalis subsp. brachiata (Thunb.) H.Perrier
  • Clematis orientalis subsp. oweniae (Harv.) Kuntze
  • Clematis orientalis var. bolusiana Kuntze
  • Clematis orientalis var. subglabra Kuntze
  • Clematis petersiana Klotzsch
  • Clematis stewartiae Burtt Davy
  • Clematis stewartiae var. wilmsii Burtt Davy
  • Clematis thunbergii Steud.
  • Clematis tibestica Quézel
  • Clematis triloba var. congensis (A.Chev.) M.Johnson

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.