Clematis crispaL.

swamp leather flower

WFO wfo-0000609775 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Clematis crispa, photographed by Steve Taylor
fig. a Steve Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-30 / obs. 201972385

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 15 botanical countries

Regions where Clematis crispa is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisKentuckyLouisianaMississippiMissouriNorth CarolinaOklahomaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginia
Native distribution of Clematis crispa, 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
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG

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 370 in flower of 398 examined

Proportion of examined Clematis crispa in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Mar 50 54 93% 82% to 97%
Apr 99 101 98% 93% to 99%
May 55 59 93% 84% to 97%
Jun 46 46 100% 92% to 100%
Jul 25 25 100% 87% to 100%
Aug 22 22 100% 85% to 100%
Sep 33 40 83% 68% to 91%
Oct 19 23 83% 63% to 93%
Nov 12 15 80% 55% to 93%
Dec 4 7 57% 25% to 84%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Clematis crispa 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. 370 of 398 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. 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 25 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 cordata Sims
  • Clematis crispa var. walteri (Pursh) A.Gray
  • Clematis cylindrica Sims
  • Clematis cylindrica var. lineariloba (DC.) Alph.Wood
  • Clematis cylindrica var. walteri (Pursh) Torr. & A.Gray
  • Clematis distorta Lavall.
  • Clematis insulensis hort. ex K.Koch
  • Clematis lineariloba DC.
  • Clematis schillingii C.Kech
  • Clematis simsii Sweet
  • Clematis simsii subsp. lobata Kuntze
  • Clematis simsii var. chrysocarpa Kuntze
  • Clematis simsii var. micrantha Kuntze
  • Clematis viticella subsp. crispa (L.) Kuntze
  • Clematis viticella subsp. walteri (Pursh) Kuntze
  • Clematis viticella var. lineariloba (DC.) Kuntze
  • Clematis walteri Pursh
  • Clematitis crispa (L.) Moench
  • Coriflora crispa (L.) W.A.Weber
  • Viorna crispa (L.) Small
  • Viorna crispa var. walteri Small
  • Viorna cylindrica Spach ex Dippel
  • Viorna obliqua Small
  • Viorna simsii Small

and 1 more.

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.