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Traveller's joy / Old man's beard / Barf yr hen ŵr / Coluddion y Diawl / Clematis vitalba
Flowers July-August
| One of the many Welsh names for this plant, coluddion y Diawl (Devil's bowels) seems to suit the modern attitude to it better than 'traveller's joy', which belongs to an age before the conservationists whipped people into a hate frenzy about many successful species such as this. Well, I have to admit that it's difficult to love it when you come across huge masses of it clambering over many trees and bushes, some of which it has killed. But then, it's only common in certain parts of southern Britain, such as in a wood near Fowey, Cornwall, where I photograped this tiny fragment of a huge mass. The refernces to beard and bowels are to do with the look of the great mass of curly seed-pods that succeed the flowers in Autumn. |
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