Frederick William Smith del. · Orr & Smith, London
Week of 23 February 2026
Siebold's clematis
Part 5 of 6 in Paxton's greenhouse
Clematis florida 'Sieboldii' (published as Clematis sieboldii)
Siebold's clematis, its cream sepals around a boss of purple petaloid stamens like a passion flower, brought from Japan in 1836 and drawn for Paxton's Magazine within two years.
- Published
- volume 4, 1838
- From
- Paxton's Magazine of Botany
- Drawn by
- Frederick William Smith
- Technique
- Hand-coloured engraving
- Family
- Ranunculaceae
- Native to
- A Japanese garden form of a Chinese clematis
About the plant
The Japanese had been breeding clematis for centuries before Europe saw one, and this is one of their masterpieces: a form of the Chinese Clematis florida in which the stamens at the centre of the flower have turned into a dense ruff of purple petals, so that the cream sepals surround a boss of violet like the corona of a passion flower. Von Siebold sent it from Japan in 1836, it flowered at Low's nursery at Clapton the next summer, and Paxton figured it in 1838 as Clematis sieboldii, a name it has kept in gardens ever since.
It is a plant that visitors stop in front of. It is also tender, resentful of cold wet springs and liable to die back for no reason, and gardeners have been losing and replacing it for nearly two hundred years. The plate, hand-coloured, shows the flowers at natural size, open and in bud, on a shoot with the divided leaves; Paxton's notes recommend a sheltered wall or the cool end of a greenhouse.
Bought together
More in the archive
