Clematis columbiana(Nutt.) Torr. & A.Gray

rock clematis

WFO wfo-0000609739 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Clematis columbiana, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. a Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-23 / obs. 203410127

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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Clematis columbiana is native: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming ArizonaColoradoIdahoMontanaNew MexicoNorth DakotaSouth DakotaTexasUtahWyoming
Native distribution of Clematis columbiana, 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
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Montana MNT
New Mexico NWM
North Dakota NDA
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Wyoming WYO

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 56 in flower of 66 examined

Proportion of examined Clematis columbiana in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 3 3 too few examined
Apr 1 2 too few examined
May 21 21 100% 85% to 100%
Jun 26 30 87% 70% to 95%
Jul 4 4 too few examined
Aug 1 5 20% 4% to 62%
Sep 0 1 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Clematis columbiana 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. 56 of 66 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 23 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.

  • Atragene columbiana Nutt.
  • Atragene diversiloba Rydb.
  • Atragene pseudoalpina (Kuntze) Rydb.
  • Atragene pseudoalpina var. diversiloba Rydb.
  • Atragene repens (Kuntze) Rydb.
  • Atragene tenuiloba (A.Gray) Britton
  • Clematis alpina subvar. tenuiloba A.Gray
  • Clematis alpina var. repens Kuntze
  • Clematis alpina var. tenuiloba (A.Gray) A.Gray
  • Clematis alpina var. tenuiloba (A.Gray) Rydb.
  • Clematis occidentalis var. albiflora Cockerell
  • Clematis pinetorum Tidestr.
  • Clematis pseudoalpina A.Nelson
  • Clematis pseudoalpina var. tenuiloba (A.Gray) A.Nelson
  • Clematis pseudoatragene Kuntze
  • Clematis pseudoatragene subsp. pseudoalpina Kuntze
  • Clematis pseudoatragene subsp. subtriternata Kuntze
  • Clematis pseudoatragene subsp. wenderothioides Kuntze
  • Clematis pseudoatragene var. pseudoalpina Kuntze
  • Clematis pseudoatragene var. subtriternata Kuntze
  • Clematis pseudoatragene var. wenderothioides Kuntze
  • Clematis tenuiloba (A.Gray) C.L.Hitchc.
  • Clematis verticillaris var. columbiana (Nutt.) A.Gray

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.